LASCAD

During the last 15 years LASCAD has become an industry-leading software package for LASer Cavity Analysis and Design. The feedback from a large community of users has helped us gather experience for optimizing laser resonator design.

For this purpose LASCAD provides a unique combination of simulation tools:

Thermal and Structural Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of thermal effects in laser crystals,
ABCD Gaussian Beam Propagation taking into account thermal lensing, gain guiding etc.,
Dynamic Analysis of Multimode and Q-switch operation (DMA),
3D Wave Optics Beam Propagation Code including diffraction, gain saturation etc.

Integration of these modules into one program package makes LASCAD a versatile instrument to model laser cavities, and to solve the problems laser engineers are confronted with. LASCAD especially provides the following computational capabilities:

Analysis of the 3-D nonlinear interaction of thermal and optical fields, commonly known as thermal lensing effect, which is one of the key problems in solid-state laser design,
Computation of efficiency and power output,
Modelling of multimode competition, beam profile, and beam quality,
Computation of pulse shape and pulse energy for Q-switch operation,
Numerical Eigenmode Analysis,
Beam Propagation outside the laser cavity.

Based on a quantitave model of the multiphysics effects in laser cavities, LASCAD allows the laser engineer to control and compensate individual features of a resonator design prior to committing hardware.