Effects of optical axis direction on optical path difference and lateral displacement of Savart polariscope

A simple method is applied to calculating the optical path difference (OPD) of a plane parallel uniaxial plate with an arbitrary optical axis direction. Then, the theoretical expressions of the OPD and lateral displacement (LD) of Savart polariscope under non-ideal conditions are obtained exactly. The variations of OPD and LD are simulated, and some important conclusions are obtained when the optical axis directions have an identical tolerance of \pm 1^{{\circ}}. An application example is given that the tolerances of optical axis directions are gained according to the spectral resolution tolerances of the stationary polarization interference imaging spectrometer (SPIIS). Several approximate formulae are obtained for explaining some conclusions above. The work provides a theoretical guidance for the optic design, crystal processing, installation and debugging, data analysis and spectral reconstruction of the SPIIS.