Modelling arbitrarily shaped and tightly focused laser pulses in electromagnetic codes

TL;DR

This paper presents an efficient numerical algorithm for accurately modeling arbitrarily shaped, tightly focused laser pulses in electromagnetic simulations, addressing limitations of the paraxial approximation that can distort field profiles.

Contribution

The authors develop a novel numerical method to compute boundary conditions for laser pulses that are consistent with Maxwell's equations, improving simulation accuracy.

Findings

Paraxial approximation can produce inaccurate field profiles.

The proposed algorithm ensures physically consistent boundary conditions.

Enhanced modeling accuracy for laser-matter interaction simulations.

Abstract

Investigation of laser matter interaction with electromagnetic codes requires to implement sources for the electromagnetic fields. A way to do so is to prescribe the fields at the numerical box boundaries in order to achieve the desired fields inside the numerical box. Here we show that the often used paraxial approximation can lead to unexpected field profiles with strong impact on the laser matter interaction results. We propose an efficient numerical algorithm to compute the required laser boundary conditions consistent with the Maxwell's equations for arbitrarily shaped, tightly focused laser pulses.