Abstract. A formulation has been developed to treat the effects of alignment errors of the optical system used in a differential laser Doppler velocimeter. It is then applied to analyse the properties of output beat signals obtained by the velocimeter. The effects of optical alignment errors on the spectral width and signal-to-noise ratio of the output beat signals and on the probing volume are investigated in some detail. The spectral width is not affected very much by the deviation of the angle between two beams incident on the probing volume, but depends mainly on the number of interference fringes produced in that volume. The signal-to-noise ratio is very sensitive to the displacement of two incident beams on the probing volume and is also affected by the intensity and beam width differences of these two beams. The probing volume is evaluated in the case of two incident beams having different beam widths.