Software > RP Coating > Purpose

RP Coating – Advanced Software for
Designing Optical Multilayer Structures

What the Software Does

RP Coating can calculate properties of optical multilayer structures: reflectivity and transmissivity for variable wavelengths and angles of incidence, also group delay, chromatic dispersion and the internal electric field distributions. Results can be displayed graphically, and sophisticated numerical optimizations are possible.

More details are given on the page describing the underlying physical model. The software runs on an ordinary PC under Microsoft Windows.

Applications

RP Coating can be applied to very different kinds of optical devices:

• anti-reflection coatings, including complex designs which can be found with the Monte-Carlo method
• dielectric mirrors, including chirped mirrors (e.g. most advanced double-chirped mirror designs with extremely high bandwidth) or other kinds of dispersive mirrors (e.g. GTIs)
• optical filters (short-pass and long-pass edge filters, band-pass filters, monolithic and air-spaced etalons, rugate filters and other types of interference filters)
• etalons (monolithic and air-spaced)
• anti-reflection coatings, including advanced multilayer structures, found e.g. with a Monte-Carlo technique
• thin-film polarizers (plate polarizers, polarizing cubes)
• semiconductor structures, such as SESAMs and VECSEL gain structures

For such devices, it helps you doing the following:

• analyzing existing coating designs, for example for checking fabrication tolerances
• finding device designs which are optimized in all respects
• refining one's understanding of the working principles and fundamental limitations

Target Groups

RP Coating is very suitable for the following institutions:

• industrial companies who fabricate multilayer coatings, or who get multilayer coatings made by others
• research laboratories, where aspects of such devices are explored in detail
• educational institutions, creating a solid technical understanding of such devices

In any case, RP Coating will give you a substantial competitive advantage, as your work will be more effective and efficient: you will have the means to find out quickly and reliably how various design approaches work, what are their limitations and how to get the optimum performance while avoiding excessively critical fabrication tolerances.