JOURNAL OF MODERN OPTICS, cilt.57, ss.1251-1259, 2010 (SCI-Expanded)
It is not always possible to diagonalize the optical ABCD matrix, but it can be brought into one of the four Wigner matrices by a similarity transformation. It is shown that the four Wigner matrices can be combined into one matrix with four branches. This result is illustrated in terms of optical activities, laser cavities, and multilayer optics.