User guide#
This guide explains how to build a propagation model, run it, and assess the result. It covers waveguides and free space, the material responses that act on a pulse, and the numerical methods used to evolve it.
If this is your first simulation, begin with the introduction. Then read the guide in the order below, or start with the chapter for your geometry. Detailed equations, conventions, and approximation limits are part of these chapters; the API reference gives the precise arguments of each function.
To… |
Start with… |
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Choose a model, input pulse, and computational window |
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Propagate in a capillary, optical fibre, or another guide |
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Model a beam, focus, or filament in a bulk medium |
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Choose the material and nonlinear processes |
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Check whether a calculation is resolved |
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Read, plot, and interpret a saved run |
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Design a configuration, compress a pulse, or scan parameters |
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Select a backend or tune a large calculation |
Each section links to examples that put the models to use. When comparing a simulation with an experiment, read both the physical assumptions of its model and the numerical checks needed to resolve it. A small integration tolerance does not establish that the time window, bandwidth, or spatial basis is adequate.
- Setting up a simulation
- Waveguide propagation
- Mode averaging
- Generalised nonlinear Schrödinger propagation
- Waveguide modes
- Multimode capillaries: the coherent wall, tapers and gradients
- Solid-core fibres: the general modal route
- Supplying a waveguide
- Profiles along the fibre
- Capillary modes and dispersion
- Mode sets and transverse quadrature
- Radial nodes for expensive responses
- Antiresonant tube-lattice fibres
- Hollow rectangular waveguides
- Hollow planar waveguides
- Modes from tabulated data
- Coherent capillary walls
- Mode conversion in a capillary taper
- Vector boundary response
- Step-index fibres
- Radial graded-index fibres
- General modal propagation
- Vector fields, nonlinear projection and power
- Circular and coupled modal bases
- General modal guides that vary along the propagation
- Electric and magnetic mode fields
- Channel labels and modal tables
- Free-space propagation
- Materials and nonlinear responses
- Materials: gases, metals and glasses
- Selecting and inspecting material data
- Gas mixtures
- Nonlinear responses
- A frequency-dependent electronic response
- The Raman response
- Raman response models
- Polarisation-dependent Raman response
- Evaluating a Raman response
- Raman data and validity
- Strong-field ionisation
- Carrier-resolved plasma response
- Envelope plasma: model, derivation and limits
- Shot noise
- TDSE response in a helium capillary
- Numerical methods and accuracy
- Results and interpretation
- Power, energy and intensity
- Accessing and continuing a run
- Reading the output of a modal run
- Output: what a run leaves behind
- Recording and inspecting provenance
- Resuming a calculation and checking compatibility
- Starting from a saved interior field
- Plane statistics
- Statistics catalogue
- Definitions of pulse statistics
- Processing: reading a run back
- Plotting: the standard figures
- Design and workflows
- Backends and performance