Phys. Rev. A 75, 033819 (2007) [11 pages]Modes of a twisted optical cavityReceived 27 November 2006; published 29 March 2007 An astigmatic optical resonator consists of two astigmatic mirrors facing each other. The resonator is twisted when the symmetry axes of the mirrors are nonparallel. We present an algebraic method to obtain the complete set of the paraxial eigenmodes of such a resonator. Basic ingredients are the complex eigenvectors of the four-dimensional transfer matrix that describes the transformation of a ray of light over a roundtrip of the resonator. The relation between the fundamental mode and the higher-order modes is expressed in terms of raising operators in the spirit of the ladder operators of the quantum harmonic oscillator. © 2007 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.75.033819
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevA.75.033819
PACS:
42.60.Da, 42.60.Jf, 42.15.−i, 03.65.Fd
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