The correlation of the energy resolution of incident light with the measured reflectance of multilayers

This paper presents an expression for describing the correlation of the energy resolution of incident light with the measured reflectance of multilayers, and gives a new method for calculating the polychromatic-light reflectance of multilayers. Using this method we give the reflectance spectrum of some multilayers in the case in which the incident light is polychromatic. The theoretical analysis shows that for the multilayers of a given design the peak reflectance of the polychromatic light is smaller than that of the monochromatic light, but no-peak reflectance of the polychromatic light is bigger than that of the monochromatic light. Further, the measured reflectance spectrum will be a line if the energy resolution is less than a decided value. The shorter the design-wavelength of the multilayer, the stronger the effect of the energy resolution on the reflectance.