Hi!

1) The apodization in the System Explorer basically changes the distribution of the rays in the pupil. Instead of having a uniformly distributed pupil, we are going to select more rays close to the center so that if we plot the number of rays vs radius of the pupil it will show a gaussian distribution. Check our help file The Setup Tab > System Group (the Setup Tab) > System Explorer > Aperture (System Explorer) > Apodization Type. So the beam will be gaussian but will be treated in terms of geometrical optics, so just rays.

2) POP is a separate mode where you propagate a beam defined in the beam definition. That beam propagates along the chief ray but apart from that, the propagation is done separately from the 'geometrical' mode. For more information, I would recommend checking our learning path: https://my.zemax.com/en-US/learning-paths/modeling-laser-beam-propagation-in-opticstudio/

3) Last point you are mentioning using Grid Phase or Grid Sag. What is the effect of those surfaces on your beam? Just checking so I can give you a relevant answer. Thank you.

Sandrine

Thank you for your answer Ms. Sandrine.

For question 3, we put grid phase that act as wavefront aberration, so that the beam profile (gaussian beam) will be effected by this wavefront aberration.

I want to ask on how to create a beam with an arbitrary intensity distribution. My aim is to created a deformed beam profile as my laser source. For example, surface 1 in my system is not gaussian distribution but the deformed beam. 

Before this, I used Grid Phase to created the deformed beam, but i want to know other methods that i can used to created the deformed beam from the beginning of my system. 

Actually, I have taken the beam profile data from my experimental system, then, i want to import the taken beam profile into my system in Zemax as the laser source. So i want to know the method on how to import the taken data instead of using grid phase.

I would like to hear from you again, thank you.

Hello,

You have multiple options to define your initial beam profile for the POP analysis. These possibilities are discussed in detail in the Help system at: The Analyze Tab (sequential ui mode) > Laser and Fibers Group > About Physical Optics Propagation > Defining the Initial Beam

To import your measured data, you can use the 'File' beam definition. In this case the beam is defined by a properly formatted table, and the table of values is placed in either a binary or text format file and read from disk. The file must end in the extension ZBF (for Zemax Beam File). The Ex and Ey values are defined such that the Ex*Ex + Ey*Ey is in units of watts. If the units flag indicates the beam units are different from the current lens units, the beam is automatically scaled to the current lens units when read into OpticStudio. You may find more information about how to manually create ZBF files in this forum thread: How to manually create a ZBF file · MyZemax

I hope this helps, but if you have any further questions, please let us know and we will be happy to help!

Best,


Csilla