Effect of Mirror Misalignments on Optical Ray Path In a Ring Resonator

The operating principal of a ring laser gyroscope depends on the phase difference for the counter-propagating waves within a closed path. The reflecting mirrors mounted on the monoblock form the traveling waves. The manufacturing accuracy of the monoblock influences the traveling path of ray, the sensitivity of laser resonator for misalignments, and diffraction losses. A 3 $\times$ 3 ray transfer matrix was derived for optical components with centering and squaring errors in a ring resonator. The matrix can be utilized to predict the optical ray paths on the basis of the manufacturing errors of the monoblock as well as the misalignment of mirrors. Then the distance and orientation (o. slope) at the arbitrary plane inside the resonator along the ideal optical path can be calculated from the chain multiplication of the ray transfer matrix for each optical component in one round trip. We also show that the counter-propagating rays In a ring resonator with errors does not coincide in each round trip, which results in gain difference between two beams, and how these errors can be adjusted through the alignment procedure. Finally this 3 $\times$ 3 ray matrix formalism can be used to calculate the beam size and its displacement from the optical axis and the deviation at the diaphragm.