fintrace 1.0.0a2
An interferometer modeling and ray tracing program
Requires Python: >=3.8
Keywords: optics, ifo-modeling, ray-tracing

# fintrace



## Description

This repository is meant to be a generalized combination of finesse and gtrace, two interferometer modeling packages. Through the CLI you can create both a Finesse model as well as *gtrace* to create a physical picture of your setup. Currently, only `.yaml` files are accepted as input for the models, and the syntax of them must be very specific; error messages and helpful text are being added.

You can also use this created model just like you would use a `Finesse` model, as it inherits from `Model`; that is to say we can do all of the interferometric modeling we would be able to do with `Finesse` with the created `Fintrace` model. See the [documentation](https://fintrace.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html) for examples.

## Installation
This repository uses its own conda environment `fintrace`, which can be installed with instructions below. The environment must be activate when running scripts.

To install:
Make sure that you have a python package manager installed such as `conda` or `mamba`.
[Anaconda](https://www.anaconda.com/)  
[mamba](https://mamba.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) 

1. cd into the desired folder you'd like to place this repository
```
cd /path/to/desired/folder
```

2. git clone this repo, then `cd` into it
```
git clone git@gitlab.com:mactodd315/fintrace.git
cd fintrace
```

3. build the `fintrace` environment contained in `environment.yml`:
```
conda env create -f environment.yml
```
or
```
mamba env create -f environment.yml
```

4. Then, enter the environment:
```
conda activate fintrace
```
or
```
mamba activate fintrace
```
You should see `(fintrace)` written before the beginning of your terminal prompt, indicating everything was built successfully.

5. Finally, the code in this repository makes heavy use of the cosmic explorer repo, so it must also be cloned and installed. Clone the cosmic-explorer repo inside some repos folder (it doesn't matter where) and install it:
```
cd /path/to/repos folder
git clone git@gitlab.com:cosmic-explorer/cosmic-explorer.git
cd cosmic-explorer
pip install -e .
```

Then to get back to fintrace, cd back and install it.:
```
cd /path/to/fintrace
pip install -e .
```
You should successfully be able to run code.


## Usage
To use, one must create a `.yaml` file with the right syntax, describing the locations and properties of each optic in the model. Generally, the more specific you are about each optic, the better; however, the examples provided show a good minimum number of parameters for each. 

Connections are described using the Finesse syntax, so the user must know how the optical system will be connected before hand.

As an example, the `bowtie.yaml` features 4 mirrors, however all of them are technically beamsplitters in the `.yaml` file because of a non-zero angle of incidence. If you know an optic will have a zero angle of incidence, you should consider its type to be `Mirror`. Using a cavity declaration shown in this example file, we can produce a beam trace of the eigenmode by running:

```
fintrace_plot_yaml bowtie_test.yaml --gtrace figures/bowtie_cavity --beam-origin cavity --draw-width --grid
```

![alt text](examples/bowtie/figures/bowtie_cavity.png "Examples")