Abstract

The work of Arnaud and Kogelnik¹ for propagating Gaussian beams through lenslike media has been generalized to encompass optical systems with nonorthogonal paraxial properties. A 4 × 4 generalized ABCD matrix evaluated along a real chief ray is used to represent the ray transformation through the system. The elements of the ray matrix are determined from real ray data. The Huygens-Fresnel diffraction integral² for this parabasal ray transformation matrix has been evaluated in closed form. For an input beam with elliptical intensity distribution this yields information about the transversal beam properties at any point in the optical system; in particular, the rotation angles of the transversal intensity and phase distributions, the beam spot radii, and the radii of curvature of the phase fronts are derived. Certain properties for the minimum values of beam parameters are also derived.

© 1988 Optical Society of America