Analysis and characterization of alignment for free-space optical interconnects based on singular-value decomposition.

We propose a theoretical method to analyze and characterize the alignment of optical systems by using a singular-value decomposition (SVD) technique. One application of this method is to identify critical parameters for alignment systematically during alignment of two-dimensional device arrays. Another example application is to characterize the sensitivity or the accuracy of the misalignment-detection capability by evaluation of the singular values of optical systems. The information obtained through SVD-based techniques yields critical insights into the analysis of alignment.