Displaying Laser Beam Spot Overlays

An overlay of the beam spots showing where laser beams intersect the target can be displayed in the Main Graphics Window. To do this, select Show | Beam Spots Overlay.

The images below show overlays for a spherical target (left) and a hohlraum target (right) at OMEGA.

The overlay shows iso-intensity contours where the beam hits the target. Also shown is the ID for each beam. The points along the contours are determined by ray-trace calculations for a grid of rays that represent each beam. If a beam partially hits two different target components, those intersection points will be displayed on the different target components (as portions of a circle). The default location of the beam ID (label) is determined by where the centroid (or axis) of the beam hits the target.

Note that the number of angle points used in generating each contour is equal to the number of angle points used in generating the beam cones in the Main Graphics Window.

Use the Laser tab of the Preferences dialog (to access this, select Edit | Preferences.) to adjust:

• The number of contours displayed and the contour values
• The color of the contours
• The thickness of the contour lines
• The default position (or "offset") of the beam label relative to the intersection of the center of the beam with the target

Other features of Beam Spot Overlay labels include:

• Labels can be edited individually, using a text box editor, by double-clicking on a label.
• Multiple labels can be simultaneously edited by selecting label(s) and right-clicking to present options under the Set menu item.
• One or more labels can be selected and moved, duplicated, and hidden/shown.
• Labels can be shown and hidden, but they cannot be deleted.
• Labels can be re-generated, in which case label text, colors, and font features are set to their default values.
• Labels can be reset to their default positions without change text properties.
• Labels properties are saved in the workspace file.

The location of the intersection of each laser beam centroid with the target can be written to a file. To do this, select File | Export Beam-Target Intersection Points.

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