Speakers
Description
Developing an optical design for ET that achieves the scientific goals within the established constraints is a core goal of the current ET collaboration. A crucial part of this is running optical simulations to test designs, explore novel ones, and to define constraints on material and detectors. To fully utilise a simulation tool, properly interpret its results and work within its limitations, it is important to not only know how to use it, but also to understand its internal logic and the mathematical concepts it implements.
Finesse has been used for optical simulations by the gravitational wave community for several decades. It offers a flexible and powerful set of tools that are of great interest to the objective set by ET. We offer a walk through of the physics, mathematics and computing happening during a simulation with Finesse, from the initial user input to the final solution object used for analysis and plotting. We present how the physical properties of the components are translated into a system of linear equations that Finesse solves to produce the final results available to the user.