Minoru YAMADA and Yasuhiro YAMANE

Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Kanazawa University, 2-40-2, Kodatsuno, Kanazawa, 920 Japan

(Received May 16, 1996; Accepted September 11, 1996)

A generalized design method for an optical filter consisting of a dielectric multilayer structure is proposed to get an arbitrary profile of the wavelength dispersion of reflectivity or transmittance. The basic concept of the method lies in the fact that the wavelength dispersion of the reflectivity is approximately determined by taking the inverse Fourier transformation of the refractive index profile of the multilayer structure. Construction of a filter with only three different values of refractive index is described.

Key words : Fourier transformation, dielectric multilayer, optical filter