Can anyone help me design a laser interferometer, which shows the propagation of a laser beam beam modulated by an Acoustic optical modulator? I don't know where to start, I don't know even how to design the laser beam. Sorry I am new to Labview. Thanks

[samilton]

Can anyone help me design an optical bench which shows the propagation of a laser beam beam modulated by an Acoustic optical modulator? I don't know where to start, I don't know even how to design the laser. . The project envolve simulate the propagation of  a tunable laser through  mirrors and AOM (acoustic optical modulator). The example below is not the real project, but it illustrate the basic design of an optical bench with laser propagation. I just need to design an interferometer which uses the same optical components such as laser, mirror,splitter, bender, AOM and RF.

Thank you in Advance.

[Neil.Pate]

you are kidding right?

[samilton]

Why nrp?

[smercurio_fc]

Why do you think that posting a question about a programming language would help you in teaching you how to design a laser?

[samilton]

Sorry smercurio,

I really meant to simulate a laser not design it. Has it is a coherent light source, it may be simulated differently. That is what I want to know how to do. If any of you have done it before, please show me.

[DianeS]

You want to simulate a laser beam.  A laser beam doing what?  Propagating in space through various optical components?

If you want to model beam propagation, LabVIEW isn't really well suited to that.  Try Paraxia or ZEMAX or perhaps even Matlab.  Paraxia is probably the easiest one to use, for beginners.

If you are trying to do something other than model beam propagation, please state what you're trying to do.

[DFGray · Accepted solution]

I must respectfully disagree.  I used LabVIEW to model laser propagation long before I joined National Instruments.  LabVIEW works as well for this as any other general purpose computing language (e.g. FORTRAN, C, Mathematica, Maple, etc.).

Your job would certainly be simpler if you used a tool specific to the task, such as ZEMAX.  However, if this is a school assignment, doing this will destroy the purpose of it, which is to teach you how it works.

If you need to do it in LabVIEW, I would recommend using the standard gaussian beam propagation matrices for each optical element.  It would probably be easiest to have a subVI which initializes your beam, then further subVIs which modify it (e.g. propagation over distance, reflection, lens, AO modulation, etc).  You can display the results on a picture control.

Note that the right way to do this would be using LabVIEW Object Oriented programming, but as a beginner who seems to be in a hurry, that would be a bit much to tackle for this project unless you had a local LabVIEW guru to help you.

You can get the mathematics you need from any standard optics textbook or from multiple places on the web.

Good luck.

[DianeS]

Fair enough.  I was thinking more about it yesterday and certainly you can do it in LabVIEW, since really it's just math and any programming language can do math.  I primarily used Paraxia and MathCAD (and sometimes FORTRAN) for beam modeling.  I never got into ZEMAX.

You are right that this has the flavor of a homework assignment, therefore Paraxia or ZEMAX would sort of defeat the purpose of the assignment.  I don't even know if Paraxia exists anymore, come to think of it.

[samilton]

I am very thankful for your comment. Apologies I could not reply on time, was out for a trip.

the "standard gaussian beam propagation matrices for each optical element", is it a tool in Labview, or is it something that I need to write? It seems that you will understood what I am trying to do, and also because you have used laser propagation before, I would like your help in sending me examples if possible DFGray.

That is correct, I need to simulate the propagation of the laser in my project, and how it will behave passing lenses, mirrors and AOM.

Thank you for your attention!

Best Regards

Samilton

[DFGray]

You will have to write them, but they are fairly easy.  First, read the two pages I referenced in the above post. Your "beam" will consist of a matrix with two elements.  You can implement the ABCD matrices as subVIs which just return a matrix and explicitly do the matrix multiplication on your block diagram, or you can create a subVI which takes your "beam" as an input, does the transform, and outputs the new beam.  I would probably do the latter.  You can make icons on your subVIs which make it obvious what each does.

You can plot your results using either and XY graph or the picture control.  The XY graph is easier, but the picture control allows you more flexibility.  Check the LabVIEW help and examples for both before you make your decision.

Good luck!