Tilted-front-interface chirped mirrors

One can achieve perfect impedance matching of dispersive mirrors to the env ironment over an arbitrarily broad spectral range by tilting the front inte rface with respect to internal interfaces of the multilayer. As a result, b y drawing on this concept one can increase the bandwidth over which the dis persion of the mirrors can be controlled to a full optical octave, limited only by technological constraints (number of layers that can be coated and accuracy of thickness control). Additionally, the undesired fluctuations of the group-delay dispersion as a function of optical frequency are dramatic ally reduced for tilted-front-interface mirrors compared with conventional chirped mirrors. (C) 2001 Optical Society of America.