The chemical oxygen-iodine laser (COIL) has several important military and industrial applications. The concern of this work is do develop a partial differential equation model describing optical behavior in the COIL. Optical behavior of the COIL has traditionally been investigated via a ray tracing method. Photons are represented as discrete particles, and their behavior is described by the geometry of the system. We develop an optical model wherein photons have a wave description. In order to construct the mathematical model, we utilize the theory of paraxial wave optics and Gaussian beams. Doing so allows us to incorporate physical effects such as diffusion/diffraction and refraction into the model. After describing the optical model, we present numerical methods for obtaining approximate solutions to the model in the cases of one and two transverse directions. Results are presented illustrating the efficacy of the numerical methods. / Ph. D.

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In this paper the rate of convergence, speed of execution and symplectic properties of the time-integrators Leap-Frog (LF2), fourth order Runge-Kutta(RK4) and Crank-Nicholson (CN2) have been studied. This was done by solving the one-dimensional model for a particle in a box (Dirichlet-conditions). The results show that RK4 is the fastest in achieving higher tolerances, while CN2 is the fastest in achieving lower tolerances. Fourth order corrections of LF (LF4)and CN (CN4) were also studied, though these showed no improvements overLF2 and CN2. All methods were shown to exhibit symplectic behavior.