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Hello All, 



I needed some help with optics design for a beam combiner setup I am working on. Essentially, I am combining two laser beam paths onto one path using a thin film polarizer. The first laser passes through a set of mirrors and lenses and a half waveplate before being incident on a thin film polarizer. The second laser follows a different beam path with a pair of mirrors and then incident on a thin film polarizer at a brewster angle of 56deg. My questions is that how can I model three different configs where I have the laser 1 path in config 1, laser 2 in config 2 and combined in config 3. Laser 1 goes through different surfaces compared to laser 2 before being incident on the polarizer so can I insert/ delete surfaces specific only to one configuration? Thanks in advance. 

Hi Joveria,



Generally two sources at the same time is not possible in sequential systems, but if you are able to use non-sequential systems you can do so easily. Ignoring surfaces in a given configuration is the preferred method for handling multiple-path systems like beam splitters, etc. The multi-configuration operand IGNM and IGNR will ignore one or a range of surfaces, and can be set to 1 (for ignore) or 0 (don't ignore) for each configuration.



You may wish to read the Knowledgebase article How to model a beam splitter in sequential mode for general ideas and methods.



Best,



Kevin


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