A transmission line model for analysis of thin film optical filters

In this paper, an analysis of thin film optical filters with a transmission line model is presented. This analogy is formalized through the transmission line telegraph equations. The predicted propagation phase rule drawn from this analogy is supported by a heuristic argument. A computer model based on transmission lines was developed to simulate various effects. The material presented here includes the optical equivalent of the anti-reflection quarter wave transformer, the application of Butterworth and Chebyshev tables for filter design, the optical tunneling effect, and replication of recently reported thin layer optical design results for angular spatial filtering.