Optcom: Open Source Optical System Simulator

What is Optcom ?

Optcom is a Python library which aims to simulate optical systems. Optcom has been build for both advanced research and teaching purposes.

On one hand, Optcom can be used as an optical system simulation framework in which users can create their own optical / electric components and benefit from a wide range of helper functions. On the other hand, Optcom can be used with the in-build components for state-of-the art optical system simulation.

Moreover, user-friendly experience is at the heart of Optcom approach. In Optcom, an optical system is built by linking the ports of different components to each other. Here is a small example of what can be done:

import optcom as oc

# Create 2 Gaussian channels
pulse = oc.Gaussian(channels=2, center_lambda=[1030., 1550.], peak_power=[0.5, 1.0])
# Create fiber with a user-defined attenuation coefficient
fiber = oc.Fiber(length=1.0, alpha=[0.4], ATT=True, DISP=True, SPM=True, save_all=True)
# Create an optical layout and link the first port of 'pulse' to the first port of 'fiber'
layout = oc.Layout()
layout.add_link(pulse.get_port(0), fiber.get_port(0))
layout.run_all()
# Extract outputs and plot
time = fiber.storage.time
power = oc.temporal_power(fiber.storage.channels)
space = fiber.storage.space
oc.animation2d(time, power, space, x_label='t', y_label='P_t',
               plot_title='My first Optcom example',
               line_labels=['1030. nm channel', '1550. nm channel'])

Tutorials

See tutorials/ for basic and advanced tutorials.

Requirements

Installation should be OS independent. Python3.7 or later version is required. See https://www.python.org/downloads/ for more detail about python installation.

As an example, in Ubuntu, Debian or Mint, python 3 can be installed with:

sudo apt-get install python3 python3-pip

Install

Optcom can be installed using pip with:

python3 -m pip install optcom

Or in order to run the latest version of the code from the git repo:

python3 -m pip install git+git://github.com/optcom-org/optcom/

The required dependencies should have been installed along the pip installation, if any trouble is encountered, the dependencies can be manually install by chance of the requirements.txt file with:

python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt

Issues and Questions

For bug report or suggestion, please use the Optcom issue tracker: https://github.com/optcom-org/optcom/issues

To ask questions about the usage of Optcom, use the Gitter repo: https://gitter.im/optcom-org/optcom

For any matter that does not concern the aforementioned ones, send an email to info@optcom.org

Contributing

Any contribution is welcome !

Optcom provides an optical system simulation framework and is as rich as the number of components that can be used. You enjoy Optcom and created your own component to fulfill your simulation need ? Share it with the community! See tutorials/ to learn how to create your own component.

Any help in testing, development or documentation is highly appreciated and can be done from contributors of all experience levels. Please have a look at the ROADMAP.md to see which tasks are available.

For contribution instructions and guidelines, please see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Documentation

Find the built documentation at https://readthedocs.org/projects/optcom/

To manually build the documentation, go in docs/ and type:

make clean && make html

Release History

• 0.1.0 : The first Alpha version of Optcom
• 0.2.0 : Complete refactoring of v0.1.0 and new features
  • 0.2.1 : Bug fix of v0.2.0
  • 0.2.2 : Clear user interface
• 0.3.0 : Change of License + all OS support
  • 0.3.1 : New parameters + additional doc
  • 0.3.2 : New components + multi-processing for Taylor series
  • 0.3.3 : New components + new parameters + 3D plot refactoring
  • 0.3.4 : Optical filter update
  • 0.3.5 : Noise management in ideal components
  • 0.3.6 : New components

Hosting

The source code is hosted at https://github.com/optcom-org/optcom

Citation

If you use Optcom, please cite it as:

@misc{Optcom-org-optcom,
  title = {{Optcom}: A Python library for optical system simulation},
  author = "{Sacha Medaer}",
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/optcom-org/optcom}},
  url = "https://github.com/optcom-org/optcom",
  year = 2019
}

License

Optcom is licensed under the terms of the Apache 2.0 License, see LICENSE.

Disclaimer

Optcom is a free open source Software developed and maintained by volunteers. The authors take no responsibility, see LICENSE.