TL;DR: How do you model lasers in UE5?

Longer Version:

Hi, I'm a researcher who had weeks of fun as a child with Algodoo (look it up, it kicks ass). And I recently introduced it to my niece, who also had fun with it.

But I noticed something troubling. Despite being one of the finest physics simulations available, it simulates only a very simplified Newtonian model.

So, I thought I'd build a better toy.

QED is super cool, and it's kinda hard, but once you get the hang of it, it makes a lot of intuitive sense.

I'm trying to build that intuition with a virtual physical model.

My basic idea is that lasers are my fundamental object, kind of like the cube is the default Newtonian object.

I'll need to simulate relatavistic gravity in order to teach light bending. But that can wait, since the phenomena isn't observable at normal scales.

But here's the problem I'm having. Math and Physics are all about optimization. It's all about doing what the system you're using is well optimized for.

I'm quite certain there are excellent math packages (though I'm new to C and Unreal, my background is in Python) and I'm also confident in my ability to implement algorithms from scratch.

But what I don't know is what Unreal is already doing. How it models the world. And how to interact with those systems.

I don't want to replace the global lighting system, I want to augment it.

What I also don't know is how to represent waves and fields in Unreal Engine.

I think Niagara is the particle system. And you can use a particle system to represent a field, but waves are quite different.

If anyone knows of any existing work in this space, I'd appreciate hearing about it.