Allowing for custom laser profile injection in EPOCH

[ZheyuanChen]

Dear developers,

I have been working on allowing EPOCH to accept custom laser profiles (amplitude and/or phase) from data files. I believe my modification is now stable and ready for use. The modification allows users to load arbitrary laser amplitude and phase profiles from raw binary data file.

I will shortly create a pull request to submit my modification. Relevant explanation will also be copied there. Meanwhile, you can read the documentation here. A very brief example is given in the documentation. You can find the input.deck and the Python laser profile generator in example_decks in both epoch2d and epoch3d.

For convenience, you can also find my modification on my GitHub repo. Testing, tutorial, and more, which can be found here (please note this repo is under construction currently). This repo has a dedicate section which includes some important testing and validation of my modification. In addition, I am planning to write some code for wrapping a Python package called LASY, which is a laser profile generator (the user can use this package or any other method they prefer).

Best regards,
Zheyuan

[ZheyuanChen]

I resent a PR #917 as there are some updates.
I have also developed a Python package which can be found here. Basically, it's a laser profile generator with full compatibility with this EPOCH modification. It computes two-dimensional TM or fully vectorial three-dimensional laser fields reflected by parabolic mirrors, then exports transverse electric-field profiles for the custom laser reader in the modified EPOCH checkout. The 3D path follows the physical-optics Stratton--Chu method of Vallières et al.(2023) and Dumont et al. (2017), with implementation insights from C. F. Nielsen (2022). It supports OAP90, on-axis and annular transmission-parabola apertures, including the NA = 0.96 experimental geometry reported by Fourmaux et al. (2025).