Abstract

The wavefronts reflected and transmitted through a coated substrate will be influenced by the non-uniformities of the coatings and the distortion of the substrate resultant from any coatings stresses. This paper examines the systematic thickness errors or coating non-uniformity only. The reflectance or transmittance may change minimally from the theoretical values for most perturbed designs, however, the phase is very sensitive to the resulting coating thickness errors. This is due to a nonlinear relation between coating thickness and optical phase change. This effect manifests itself as optical phase shift as a function of wavelength. These phase shifts in turn may cause optical aberrations such as defocus and astigmatism.

© 2001 Optical Society of America