title: Analysis of reentrant two-mirror nonplanar ring laser cavity.
abstract: A rigorous analysis is performed on the reentrant nonplanar ring laser cavity constructed by a Herriott-type multipass cell. Since the cavity is highly nonplanar, the angle between the incident planes at each reflection becomes different from that of the image rotation angles. The beam rotation, astigmatism, and spherical aberration are considered to obtain a self-consistent solution of the Gaussian beam. It turns out that spherical aberration is an important issue for this nonplanar resonator. Without taking into account the spherical aberration, a stable resonator would be difficult to realize. Using a self-consistent Gaussian beam propagation method, the laser beam characteristics are solved analytically. The results are compared with that of the 2 x 2 ABCD method.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan 804, Republic of China.
authors.forename: Hung-Tsang
authors.initials: HT
authors.lastname: Tuan
authors.forename: Sheng-Lung
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Huang