REFLECTION AND TRANSMISSION OF THE UNEQUAL MIRRORS INTERFERENCE WEDGE

Some interesting features of the interference wedge of thickness 5-200 mu m are found which characterize its reflection and transmission whe n it is constructed of unequal-reflectivity mirrors. The analysis of t he wedge's behaviour is made using equations derived by us for restric ted laser beam illumination on the assumption of truncated Gaussian am plitude distribution and uniform phase distribution. It is shown that at resonant wavelengths the unequal-reflectivity mirrors interference wedge has a property of optical asymmetry in reflection for both contr aincidences and that the earlier-reported phenomenon of spectrally con trolled resurgence of light outside the nonresonantly reflected beam i ncreases drastically to reach at resonance 60-70% of the reflected pow er. We ascertained that the wedge spectral selectivity is a function o f the product of the reflectivities of its mirrors. Keeping one of the m fixed and increasing the other, a higher wedge transmission may be o btained, but for a constant value of their product a maximum in transm ission is achieved at equal reflectivities. Some of the dependences ob tained have been checked experimentally.