Course Description
The demand for optical coatings of all kinds is greater than it has ever been
and is still increasing. Many coatings are of complex and difficult design, and support
applications in advanced technology. Optical communication requires filters for wavelength
division multiplexing that are of a level of performance impossible to achieve until
recently. Gain equalization for fiber amplifiers presents new and unusual demands.
Interleaving filters present even greater challenges. Dispersion compensation is
increasing in importance and will become vital when the bit rates rise, as projected, to
40Gb/s. Ultrafast lasers produce pulses so short that transient effects in coatings become
important and a completely new design approach is required. Coatings can not only be
designed to have minimum effect on pulses but even to improve their shape and especially
to shorten them. The implications for improvements in communications are clear. But it is
not only in such short-pulse applications that advanced techniques are required.
Antireflection coatings for wide ranges of wavelength and angle of incidence, coatings
such as rugates that depend on layer inhomogeneity, coatings involving metal layers like
surface plasmon resonance detectors, filters with multiple peaks, filters and coatings
connected with color are just some of the topics where expert knowledge and techniques are
required from a designer.The ever-increasing demands for higher and higher levels of
system performance imply equally increasing demands for coating performance. Coating
practitioners find themselves having to understand not simply the operation of coatings
but also how they behave and influence the application in which they are used. Sound
guidance to the systems designer is of major importance in the achievement of an
ultimately satisfactory performance.
This course examines a number of important advanced topics in optical coating design
and application and uses them as vehicles for the development of tools and techniques of
much broader application. It assumes a degree of knowledge consistent with the regular
course Optical Coatings from Design through Manufacture and
demonstrates the application of a similar logical approach to more complex and difficult
problems. The emphasis is on rigorous understanding rather than catalogues of information.
An important feature of the course will be the reinforcement of the lectures by
hands-on computer exercises and tutorials. These tutorials allow students to probe more
deeply into areas of particular interest to them. They may even include investigation of
their own specific problems. For the duration of the course each student has the sole use
of a dedicated computer, which, for our convenience, carries the Essential Macleod package
but it is not necessary to possess this software to benefit from the course |
