Reflective quarterwave and halfwave retarders based on light interference in birefringent thin films on metal substrates at normal incidence
Transmissive quarterwave retardation plates have been successfully fabricated recently using birefringent thin films (~3 μm thick) obtained by oblique-incidence deposition of metal oxides on glass slides.1 The desired retardance is acquired in one-way transmission through the film at normal incidence and the effect of (incoherent) multiple-beam interference was apparently negligible. In this paper light interference in a birefringent thin film deposited on a reflecting (typically metallic) substrate for normally incident coherent illumination is considered. The object is to design birefringent mirrors that function as quarterwave and halfwave retarders in normal-incidence reflection. For a given substrate at a given wavelength, the constraint on the birefringence, average refractive index, and thickness of the film so that quarterwave or halfwave retardation is attained at normal incidence is determined. A 2-D Newton-Raphson method is utilized to find all possible solutions. The sensitivity of a given design (i.e., the deviation from exact quarterwave or halfwave retardation) is calculated for given perturbations of the film parameters.