Beam position controlling method for 3D optical system and its application in non-planar ring resonators

A novel theoretical beam position controlling method for 3D optical system has been proposed in this paper. Non-planar ring resonator, which is a typical 3D optical system, has been chosen as an example to show its application. To the best of our knowledge, the generalized ray matrices, augmented 5 × 5 ray matrices for paraxial dielectric interface transmission and paraxial optical-wedge transmission, and their detailed deducing process have been proposed in this paper for the first time. By utilizing the novel coordinate system for Gaussian beam reflection and the generalized ray matrix of paraxial optical-wedge transmission, the rules and some novel results of the optical-axis perturbations of non-planar ring resonators have been obtained. Wedge angle-induced mismatching errors of non-planar ring resonators have been found out and two experimental beam position controlling methods to effectively eliminate the wedge angle-induced mismatching errors have been proposed. All those results have been confirmed by related alignment experiments and the experimental results have been described with diagrammatic representation. These findings are important to the beam control, cavity design, and cavity alignment of high precision non-planar ring laser gyroscopes. Those generalized ray matrices and their deducing methods are valuable for ray analysis of various kinds of paraxial optical-elements and resonators. This novel theoretical beam position controlling method for 3D optical system is valuable for the controlling of various kinds of 3D optical systems.