Chirped mirror
dielectric mirror
A chirped mirror is a dielectric mirror with chirped spaces—spaces of varying depth designed to reflect varying wavelengths of lights—between the dielectric layers (stack).
Chirped mirrors are used in applications like lasers to reflect a wider range of light wavelengths than ordinary dielectric mirrors, or to compensate for the dispersion of wavelengths that can be created by some optical elements. Chirped mirrors are also found in structurally colored biological systems, including the shiny golden and silver color of certain beetles' elytra, e.g. those of the Ruteline genus Chrysina. In these cases, the chirped mirror generates complex color (such as gold or silver) when illuminated by white light by simultaneously reflecting a broad range of monochromatic colors.
Simple explanation
An ordinary dielectric mirror is made to reflect a single frequency of light. The dielectric mirror is made of transparent materials that are uniformly layered at a depth of 1/4 the wavelength of light the dielectric mirror is designed to reflect. In addition, the amplitude reflection coefficients for the interfaces have alternating signs, hence all reflected components from the interfaces interfere constructively, which results in a strong reflection for the designed wavelength. The dielectric mirror is transparent to other wavelengths of light except those in a very narrow band around the wavelength it is designed to reflect.
A chirped mirror is made to reflect a wider range of frequencies.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chirped mirror” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.