2. Analysis method
The ray matrix of a general optical component with angular misalignment and translational displacements has the form
where
,
,
and
are the input ray and output ray heights from the reference axis along the
x and
y axes respectively and we call them optical-axis decentration.
,
,
and
are the angles that the input ray and output ray makes with the reference axis in the
x and
y plane respectively and we call them optical-axis tilt.
,
,
and
are the standard ray-matrix elements in tangential plane,
,
,
and
are the standard ray-matrix elements in sagittal plane,
and
are the decentration terms which represent radial displacements along
x and
y axes.
and
are the tilt terms which represent the angular misalignments.
A spherical mirror M
i with radius R
i has been chosen as an example to show the perturbation sources in
Fig. 1
and
Fig. 2
. The incident angle is A
i. As shown in
Fig. 1(a), generally the mirror M
i has 3 kinds of translational displacements and 3 kinds of angular misalignments.
,
and
are three kinds of translational displacements along the axes of
,
and
respectively.
,
and
are three kind of angular misalignments around the axes of
,
and
respectively.
can be ignored because the mirror has a spherical symmetry.

Fig. 1 Translational displacements of a spherical mirror Mi. (a) axial displacement of Mi and (b) radial displacement of Mi. Ri: the radius of spherical mirror Mi, Ai: the incident angle, Mi1: the blue solid arc which is the initial position of Mi, Mi2: the red solid arc in (a) which is the position of Mi after axial displacement , Mi3: the red solid arc in (b) which is the position of Mi after radial displacement , P1, P2, P3, P4 and P5: the reflecting points, O1 and O2: spherical centers of Mi1 and Mi3, , and : three translational axes, , and : three rotational axes, L1i and L2i: two parallel incident rays, L1o1, L1o2, L2o1 and L2o2: four reflection rays, and : the coordinate axes of the incident ray, and : the coordinate axes of the reflected ray, θ1: the angle between line O1P1 and line O1P3, θ2: the angle between line O2P4 and line O2P5, : the distance between P1 and P3, : the distance between P4 and P5, : the distance between P1 and P4.
Fig. 2 Angular misalignments of a spherical mirror Mi. (a) definition of a mirror’s misalignments angle and (b) angular misalignment of the spherical mirror Mi. around rotational axis Rix. Ri: the radius of spherical mirror Mi, Ai: the incident angle, Mi4: the red solid line which is the position of Mi after angular misalignment , Mi5: the red dashed line which is the position of Mi after angular misalignment , Mi1: the blue solid arc which is the initial position of Mi, Mi6: the red solid arc which is the position of Mi after angular misalignment , P1: the reflecting points, O1 and O3: spherical centers of Mi1 and Mi6, , and : three rotational axes, L1i: incident ray, L1o1 and L1o3: two reflection rays, and : the coordinate axes of the incident ray, and : the coordinate axes of the reflected ray. θ3: the angle between P1O1 and P1O3.
In summary, , , , , and are 5 kinds of possible perturbation sources for a spherical mirror. and are angular misalignments. In this paper, and are called radial displacements, and is called axial displacement.
The axial displacement has not been discussed in detail before. The 5×5 ray matrix for a mirror which has been proposed in our previous paper is not applicable [
16
X. W. Long and J. Yuan, “Method for eliminating mismatching error in monolithic triaxial ring resonators,” Chin. Opt. Lett.
8(12), 1135–1138 (2010). [CrossRef]
]. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a generalized 5×5 ray matrix for a mirror with all of the 5 possible perturbation sources is proposed and detailed coordinate system for deriving this matrix is presented.
The axial displacement
will be analyzed first. As shown in
Fig. 1(a), M
i1 and M
i2 represent the mirror M
i before and after the axial displacement
. The reflection point has been changed from point P
1 and to point P
2. For a linear resonator, the ray is incident vertically and
. The transversal offset between P
1 and P
2 is zero and the reflection point has not been changed under the axial displacement
. For a ring resonator, the ray is not incident vertically and
. To discuss this effect in detail, two parallel incident rays L1
i and L2
i are chosen for examples. L1
o1 is the reflection ray of L1
i via the reflection at the point P
1 of M
i1. L2
o1 is the reflection ray of L2
i via the reflection at the point P
3 of M
i1. L2
o2 is the reflection ray of L2
i via the reflection at the point P
2 of M
i2. The coordinate axes of the incident ray are
and
, and the coordinate axes of the reflected rays are
and
. Firstly the decentration terms which represent the radial displacement along the
x and
y axes are analyzed. For the incident ray L2
i, the coordinates of the point P
2 are
and
in the coordinate axes of incidental ray and reflection ray respectively, so the standard ray-matrix elements M
i(1, 5) should be modified into
. Secondly, the tilt terms which represent the angular misalignments are analyzed. For the reflection ray of the incident ray L2
i in the coordinate axis of reflection ray, the exit angle of L2
o1 is
and the exit angle of L2
o2 is 0. This angle is under the direction of
x axis and the angle modification under the direction of
y axis is 0, so the standard ray-matrix elements M
i(2, 5) should be modified into
. The case which is shown in
Fig. 1 is that the angle between the positive directions of
and
is bigger than 90 degree. If the angle is smaller than 90 degree, the standard ray-matrix elements M
i(1, 5) and M
i(2, 5) should be modified into
and
respectively.
The spherical mirror’s radial displacements
and
need to be considered too. As shown in
Fig. 1(b), radial displacement
has been chosen as example for analysis. Firstly the decentration terms which represent the radial displacement along the
x and
y axes are analyzed. For the incident ray L1
i, the coordinates of the point P
4 are
and
in the coordinate axes of incidental ray and reflection ray respectively, so the standard ray-matrix elements M
i(1, 5) should be modified into
. This term can be ignored in this paper because
. The exit angle of L1
o2 is
and the exit angle of L1
o1 is 0. This angle is under the direction of
x axis and the angle modification under the direction of
y axis is 0, so the standard ray-matrix elements M
i(2, 5) should be modified into
. Similarly, the standard ray-matrix elements M
i(4, 5) should be modified into
with the consideration of spherical mirror’s radial displacement
.
As shown in
Fig. 2(a), the angular misalignment
has been chosen as example to show the definitions of
,
and
. We look at the mirror M
i behind the rotation axis
. When the mirror rotates clockwise with respect to its rotation axis
, the induced misalignment angle of
is negative and
. When the mirror rotates counterclockwise with respect to its rotation axis
, the induced misalignment angle of
is positive and
. The misalignment angles of
and
are defined similarly.
can be ignored because the mirror has a spherical symmetry.
The angular misalignment
has been chosen as example for analysis in
Fig. 2(b). Firstly the decentration terms which represent the radial displacement along the
x and
y axes are analyzed. For the incident ray L1
i, the coordinates of the point P
1 are both
in the coordinate axes of incidental ray and reflection ray, so the standard ray-matrix elements M
i(1, 5) should not be modified. The exit angle of L1
o3 is
and the exit angle of L1
o1 is 0. This angle is under the direction of
x axis and the angle modification under the direction of
y axis is 0, so the standard ray-matrix elements M
i(2, 5) should be modified into
. Similarly, the standard ray-matrix elements M
i(4, 5) should be modified into
with the consideration of mirror’s angular misalignment
.
In summary, a generalized ray matrix for a mirror Mi with all kinds of possible perturbation sources including , , , , and ( can be ignored) can be written as:
3. Analysis of square ring resonators
SRR has been chosen as an example in this paper. As shown in
Fig. 3(a)
, the optical-axis locations
,
,
and
are the optical-axis deviations from the longitudinal axis of the ideal diaphragm and the center of the longest gain capillary along the
x and
y axes respectively, and the center of the longest gain capillary is also the center of the gain medium. The positive orientation of
,
,
and
are shown in
Fig. 3(a). For a high accuracy laser gyro, in order to make the total diffraction loss be lowest and to improve the performance, it would be much better to make the optical-axis pass through the center of the diaphragm (point
e) and the center of the gain capillary (point
g) simultaneously.
Fig. 3 (a) Schematic diagram of square ring resonator and (b) schematic diagram of alignment experiment. Ma and Mb: spherical mirrors, Mc and Md: planar mirrors, the incident angle is 45°; a, b, c and d: terminal points of the resonator, e: the center of the diaphragm, g: the center of the gain capillary, f: the midpoint between b and c, h: the midpoint between a and d, :x and y coordinate axes at points e, f, g and h, : axial displacement of Mi(i = a,b,c,d), : radial displacements of the spherical mirrors Ma and Mb, HNLP: He-Ne laser with path length control device, RAD1 and RAD2: reflectors with adjusting device, LB: light bulb, CFLAD: CCD area with focusing lens and adjusting device, PCIBS: personal computer with image grabber and image processing software, FI: facular image.
Planar mirror’s radial displacements
can be ignored because planar mirrors
have a radius of ∞. For a ring laser cavity after machining, the angles of the terminal surfaces have been determined. This means that the angular misalignments
caused by the angles of the terminal surfaces are 0. In summary, the simplified perturbation sources of
and
should be considered and the perturbation sources of
and
should not be considered in the following discussion. The positive orientations of
and
are shown in
Fig. 3(a) and these orientations are their translational axes respectively. The definitions of
and
are similar to the definition in
Fig. 1.
The impact of the simplified perturbation sources and on optical-axis perturbation can be obtained by solving for the eigenvector of the total round-trip matrix of the ring resonator. , , and are the optical-axes perturbations at the center of the diaphragm (point e) and the center of the gain capillary (point g) along the x and y axes respectively, and , , and caused by the above mentioned perturbation sources can be written as
Figure 3(b) shows schematic diagram of alignment experiment [
17
D. Z. Anderson, “Alignment of resonant optical cavities,” Appl. Opt.
23(17), 2944–2949 (1984). [CrossRef]
[PubMed]
,
18
N. M. Sampas and D. Z. Anderson, “Stabilization of laser beam alignment to an optical resonator by heterodyne detection of off-axis modes,” Appl. Opt.
29(3), 394–403 (1990). [CrossRef]
[PubMed]
]. The passive ring cavity is formed by two spherical mirrors (M
a and M
b) and two planar mirrors (M
c and M
d). A light bulb (LB) is used to illuminate the diaphragm and the longest gain capillary. He-Ne laser (HNLP) with wavelength
is used as laser source. The laser is reflected by two reflectors which are mounted on adjusting device (RAD1 and RAD2), and then incident into the passive ring cavity. CCD area with focusing lens which is also mounted on a adjusting device (CFLAD) is used to pick up the facular image, then the facular image (FI) is captured into the memory of a personal computer with an image grabber (PCIBS), then the image was transformed into a digital image. The center of the facular image (FI) can be obtained by image processing software (PCIBS). The image grabber has a 8 bits analog-to-digital converter, which is the light intensity range where every element of the CCD area can detect and it can be subdivided into 256 parts. The system can sense a very small deviation of the center of the facular image (FI) because the deviation causes a small alteration in the distribution of light intensity which can be sensed by the CCD area and image grabber. Special arithmetic to processing the digital image was previously published [
19
J. Yuan and X. W. Long, “CCD-area-based autocollimator for precision small-angle measurement,” Rev. Sci. Instrum.
74(3), 1362–1365 (2003). [CrossRef]
,
20
J. Yuan, X. W. Long, and K. Y. Yang, “Temperature-controlled autocollimator with ultrahigh angular measuring precision,” Rev. Sci. Instrum.
76(12), 125106 (2005). [CrossRef]
]. The arithmetic to calculate the center of the facular image here is similar to the arithmetic to calculate the absolute position of the cross reticle image [
19
J. Yuan and X. W. Long, “CCD-area-based autocollimator for precision small-angle measurement,” Rev. Sci. Instrum.
74(3), 1362–1365 (2003). [CrossRef]
,
20
J. Yuan, X. W. Long, and K. Y. Yang, “Temperature-controlled autocollimator with ultrahigh angular measuring precision,” Rev. Sci. Instrum.
76(12), 125106 (2005). [CrossRef]
].
First step, the light bulb (LB) is switched on and the laser (HNLP) is switched off, the facular image of illuminated diaphragm and illuminated gain capillary can be obtained respectively by adjusting the focusing lens (CFLAD). The centers of the facular image of illuminated diaphragm and illuminated gain capillary can be made both located at the center of the CCD area by adjusting the focusing lens and the adjusting device (CFLAD). The ideal optical-axis of the passive ring cavity passes through the center of the diaphragm and the center of the gain capillary. As a consequence, the optical-axis of the CCD area and focusing lens has been made aligned with the ideal optical-axis of the passive ring cavity.
Second step, spherical mirror Ma is removed from the cavity first, then the light bulb (LB) is switched off and the laser (HNLP) is switched on. The facular image of incidental laser at different locations can be obtained by adjusting the focusing lens (CFLAD). The centers of the facular image of the incidental laser at different locations can be made located at the center of the CCD area by adjusting the focusing lens and the adjusting device of two reflectors (RAD1 and RAD2). As a consequence, the optical-axis of the incidental laser has been made aligned with the optical-axis of the CCD area and focusing lens and the ideal optical-axis of the passive ring cavity too.
Third step, spherical mirror M
a is mounted on the cavity first, then the path length control device of laser (HNLP) is adjusted and the frequency of the input laser is modified, when the input frequency has a resonance with the passive ring cavity, the centers of the beam frequency facular images at point
e and
g can be obtained by adjusting the focusing lens (CFLAD). The optical-axis of the beam transmitted by the resonator is called the real optical-axis in this paper and it passes through the centers of the beam frequency facular images at point
e and
g. When the perturbation sources of
and
is added to the mirrors of passive ring cavity, the real optical axis will modified with respect to the ideal optical-axis of the passive ring cavity accordingly. As a consequence, the rules of optical-axis perturbation have been obtained and the results in
Eq. (3) have been confirmed.
The experimental results are shown with diagrammatic representation in
Fig. 4
. Optical-axis perturbations caused by spherical mirror’s axial displacements
and planar mirror’s axial displacements
are illustrated in
Fig. 4(a) and
Fig. 4(b) respectively. It can be easily found that
have no contributions to perturbations in sagittal plane such as
and
. In addition, the following novel results can be obtained, that spherical mirror’s axial displacements
and
have contributions on
and
, while at the same time, planar mirror’s axial displacements
and have no contributions to
. Optical-axis perturbation in tangential plane and sagittal plane which are caused by radial displacements
and
respectively are illustrated in
Fig. 4(c) and
Fig. 4(d) accordingly.
Fig. 4 Schematic diagram of experimental results on optical-axis perturbations in square ring resonator. (a) optical-axis perturbation caused by spherical mirror’s axial displacements , (b) optical-axis perturbation caused by planar mirror’s axial displacements , (c) optical-axis perturbation caused by spherical mirror’s radial displacements and (d) optical-axis perturbations caused by spherical mirror’s axial displacements . The ideal optical-axes and the real optical axes after special perturbations are represented by blue solid lines and red dashed lines respectively, spherical mirror’s positions after axial displacements and radial displacements are illustrated with red solid arcs, and planar mirror’s positions after axial displacements are illustrated with red solid lines.
4. Analysis of monolithic triaxial ring resonators
Based on the above discussion, we can consider the optical-axis perturbation of MTRR which has been proposed in ref [
15
J. Yuan, X. W. Long, and L. M. Liang, “Optical-axis perturbation in triaxial ring resonator,” Appl. Opt.
47(5), 628–631 (2008). [CrossRef]
[PubMed]
]. For a MTRR, all its three planar ring resonators are SRRs which are mutually orthogonal. As shown in
Fig. 5
, mirrors M
1, M
2, M
3, M
4, M
5 and M
6 are respectively positioned in the center of each cube body face. The cube is machined such that a small diameter bore connects adjacent mirrors. A closed optical cavity is defined between four coplanar mirrors, which are interconnected by bores. There are three mutually orthogonal closed beam paths, each of which is used to detect angular rotation about its normal axis. The planar ring resonator which is defined by the optical cavity between the mirrors M
2, M
3, M
4 and M
6 is called cavity I, the resonator defined by M
1, M
3, M
5 and M
6 is called cavity II, and the resonator defined by M
1, M
2, M
5 and M
4 is called cavity III.
Fig. 5 Schematic diagram of MTRR with all 3 spherical mirror’s radial displacements and all 6 mirror’s axial displacements. M1, M2 and M3: spherical mirrors with radius R, M4, M5 and M6: planar mirrors, Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, Q5 and Q6: terminal points of the resonator, PA:, PB:, PC, PD, PE and PB: the midpoints of straight lines Q2Q3, Q1Q3, Q1Q2, Q4Q6, Q5Q6 and Q4Q5 respectively, : radial displacements of spherical mirrors M1, M2 and M3, : axial displacements of mirrors M1, M2, M3, M4, M5 and M6.
The mirror’s angular misalignment-induced optical-axis perturbations in SRR and MTRR have been discussed, and the diaphragm mismatching error
C of MTRR has also been found out in previous papers [
8
J. Yuan, X. W. Long, B. Zhang, F. Wang, and H. C. Zhao, “Optical axis perturbation in folded planar ring resonators,” Appl. Opt.
46(25), 6314–6322 (2007). [CrossRef]
[PubMed]
,
15
J. Yuan, X. W. Long, and L. M. Liang, “Optical-axis perturbation in triaxial ring resonator,” Appl. Opt.
47(5), 628–631 (2008). [CrossRef]
[PubMed]
,
16
X. W. Long and J. Yuan, “Method for eliminating mismatching error in monolithic triaxial ring resonators,” Chin. Opt. Lett.
8(12), 1135–1138 (2010). [CrossRef]
].
C cannot be decreased by modifying the angles of the terminal surfaces and the terminal mirrors. In other words, the three monoaxial ring resonators cannot be aligned to pass through the center of their diaphragms simultaneously by angular misalignments. In this paper, the perturbation sources of all 6 mirror’s axial displacements and all 3 spherical mirror’s radial displacements will be considered. The points P
A, P
B and P
C, which are the diaphragms of the cavities I, II and III, and their symmetrical points P
D, P
E and P
F, which are the center of the gain capillary for each cavity, will be chosen for analysis. For MTRR, it would be better that the optical-axes of all the three monoaxial ring resonators pass through the center of their diaphragms (P
A, P
B and P
C) simultaneously, and this mean the diaphragm mismatching error
C should be eliminated [
15
J. Yuan, X. W. Long, and L. M. Liang, “Optical-axis perturbation in triaxial ring resonator,” Appl. Opt.
47(5), 628–631 (2008). [CrossRef]
[PubMed]
]. At the same time, it would be much better that the optical-axes of all the three monoaxial ring resonators pass through the center of their gain capillaries (P
D, P
E and P
F) simultaneously too, and this mean the gain capillary mismatching error
which will be defined in following sections should be eliminated too.
As shown in
Fig. 5,
,
,
,
,
and
represent the radial displacements of spherical mirror
from time of 0 to t respectively.
,
,
,
,
and
represent the axial displacement of mirror
from time of 0 to t respectively. The positive orientations of
, are similar to the definitions of
Fig. 3 and ref [
15
J. Yuan, X. W. Long, and L. M. Liang, “Optical-axis perturbation in triaxial ring resonator,” Appl. Opt.
47(5), 628–631 (2008). [CrossRef]
[PubMed]
]. The optical-axis perturbations at the points P
A, P
B, P
C, P
D, P
E and P
F, caused by all the 3 spherical mirror’s translations displacements and all the 6 mirror’s axial displacements can be written as
and
Following the expression in ref [
15
J. Yuan, X. W. Long, and L. M. Liang, “Optical-axis perturbation in triaxial ring resonator,” Appl. Opt.
47(5), 628–631 (2008). [CrossRef]
[PubMed]
,
16
X. W. Long and J. Yuan, “Method for eliminating mismatching error in monolithic triaxial ring resonators,” Chin. Opt. Lett.
8(12), 1135–1138 (2010). [CrossRef]
], we can obtain the following equations
That is different from the results of optical-axis perturbation caused by the mirror’s angular misalignments where it is 0 in ref [
15
J. Yuan, X. W. Long, and L. M. Liang, “Optical-axis perturbation in triaxial ring resonator,” Appl. Opt.
47(5), 628–631 (2008). [CrossRef]
[PubMed]
]. We use the functions of
to represent the optical-axis locations those 6 points at the time of
t.
is used to represent the optical-axis locations at the time of
. The optical-axis perturbations during the period of time from 0 to
t can be written as:
By using the following definition of mismatching error
C and
, and utilizing
Eq. (9) and
Eq. (10), we can obtain
is the total spatial displacements between the ideal optical-axes and the real optical-axes of the cavities I, II and III at the locations of their diaphragms.
is the total spatial displacements between the ideal optical-axes and the real optical-axes of the cavities I, II and III at the locations of their gain capillaries.
is called the diaphragm mismatching error and
is called the gain capillary mismatching error in this paper. The distances between the optical axis and the center of the diaphragm at any point of P
A, P
B, P
C and their symmetrical point P
D, P
E and P
F at the time of t can be written as
,
,
,
,
and
[
15
J. Yuan, X. W. Long, and L. M. Liang, “Optical-axis perturbation in triaxial ring resonator,” Appl. Opt.
47(5), 628–631 (2008). [CrossRef]
[PubMed]
],
Obviously, when
, the three monoaxial ring resonators cannot be aligned to the best condition of
. In order to make the total diffraction loss of the monolithic triaxial ring resonator be lowest, the values of
,
,
,
,
and
should be made smallest. That is to say that the diaphragm mismatching error
C should be shared equally [
15
J. Yuan, X. W. Long, and L. M. Liang, “Optical-axis perturbation in triaxial ring resonator,” Appl. Opt.
47(5), 628–631 (2008). [CrossRef]
[PubMed]
]. So the best case should be
Now let us look back to the
Eq. (11), the result in ref [
15
J. Yuan, X. W. Long, and L. M. Liang, “Optical-axis perturbation in triaxial ring resonator,” Appl. Opt.
47(5), 628–631 (2008). [CrossRef]
[PubMed]
] is not valid now. The diaphragm mismatching error
and gain capillary mismatching error
of the MTRR is not invariant and it can be variable because of spherical and planar mirror’s axial displacements. Whatever the mismatch errors
C and
of the MTRR at the time of
is big or small,
C and
at the time of
t can be decreased and even eliminated to 0 by choosing appropriate
,
,
,
,
and
. If the following conditions have been satisfied:
And the simplest case is
then the following ideal condition can be obtained:
, , , the distances between the optical axis and the center of the diaphragm at any point of PA, PB, PC have been made smallest. At the same time, , and , the distances between the optical axis and the center of the gain capillary at any point of PD, PE, PF have been made smallest too. The total diffraction loss of the monolithic triaxial ring resonator has been made lowest.
Cavities I, II and III of MTRR are SRRs, so the alignment experimental setup for MTRR is similar to the setup for SRR. Three sets of experimental setup as shown in
Fig. 3(b) are used to align the three SRRs of MTRR simultaneously.
The alignment processes of MTRR are similar to the alignment process of SRR which has been discussed in previous section. During the first step, the optical-axes of three set of CCD areas and focusing lens have been made aligned with the ideal optical-axes of cavities I, II and III of MTRR respectively. During second step, the optical-axes of three set of incidental lasers have been made aligned with the three ideal optical-axes of the cavities I, II and III respectively too. Third step, the incidental lasers (HNLP) are adjusted and the frequencies of the input lasers are modified, when the input frequencies have resonances with passive ring cavity I, II and III simultaneously. When the perturbation sources of and is added to the mirrors of passive ring cavity, the real optical axes will be modified with respect to the ideal optical-axes of the passive ring cavity accordingly.
As a consequence, the rules of optical-axes perturbations have been obtained and the results in above theoretical analysis have been confirmed. Experimental results on the method for sharing and eliminating the mismatching errors C and C2 in SRR of MTRR is illustrated in
Fig. (6)
. Cavity I is SRR of MTRR and it has been chosen as example to describe its optical-axis perturbation during the mismatching error sharing process and mismatching errors eliminating process. The ideal optical-axis of cavity I without any perturbation sources is illustrated in
Fig. 6(a). Without any elimination method, every single monoaxial ring resonator of the MTRR have to share the diaphragm mismatching error
C in the three specific directions of
,
and
equally described as
Eq. (13). Optical-axis perturbation of the cavity I during this sharing process has been illustrated in
Fig. 6(b).
Fig. 6 Schematic diagram of experimental results on the method for sharing and eliminating the mismatching errors C and C2 in SRR of MTRR. (a) ideal optical-axis of SRR, (b) optical-axis perturbation of SRR during mismatching error sharing process, (c) optical-axis perturbation of SRR during the mismatching error eliminating process by utilizing spherical mirror’s axial displacements , and (d) optical-axis perturbation of SRR during the eliminating process by utilizing both spherical and planar mirror’s axial displacements . The ideal optical-axis, the optical-axis after the mismatching error sharing process and the optical axis after the mismatching error eliminating process are represented by blue solid line, green solid line and red dashed line respectively, spherical mirror’s positions after axial displacements are illustrated with red solid arc, planar mirror’s positions after axial displacements are illustrated with red solid line.
The Optical-axis perturbation of the cavity I during the elimination process by utilizing the previous elimination method is illustrated in
Fig. 6(c) [
16
X. W. Long and J. Yuan, “Method for eliminating mismatching error in monolithic triaxial ring resonators,” Chin. Opt. Lett.
8(12), 1135–1138 (2010). [CrossRef]
], and the Optical-axis perturbation of the cavity I during the elimination process by utilizing the novel elimination method is illustrated in
Fig. 6(d). As shown in
Fig. 6(c), with the eliminating method which has been proposed in ref [
16
X. W. Long and J. Yuan, “Method for eliminating mismatching error in monolithic triaxial ring resonators,” Chin. Opt. Lett.
8(12), 1135–1138 (2010). [CrossRef]
]. and by utilizing spherical mirror’s axial displacements
as described in
Eq. (14,
15), the optical-axes of all the three monoaxial ring resonators of MTRR can be made to pass through the center of their diaphragms, but meanwhile they deviate from the center of their gain capillaries. As shown in
Fig. 6(d), by utilizing both spherical and planar mirror’s axial displacements
as described in
Eq. (14,
15), the optical-axes of all the three monoaxial ring resonators of MTRR can be made to pass through the center of their diaphragms and the center of their gain capillaries simultaneously.
It is worthwhile to note that the mirrors axial displacement cannot be modified during alignment process, even if the path length control device is added to the mirrors after the alignment process, the mirror’s modifying range is still limited. So, in our experiment, the diaphragm mismatching error
and gain capillary mismatching error
of MTRR will be measured first in the first alignment process, then the ring cavity block will be sent back to be machined. The eliminating process will been accomplished by controlling the allowances of the terminal faces of the ring cavity block and
are modified as described in
Eq. (14,
15). At last, the diaphragm mismatching error
and gain capillary mismatching error
of MTRR will be reduced to 0 in the second alignment process.