Effect of a dielectric film on the characteristics of an open Fabry-Perot resonator cavity

It is demonstrated that placing a thin dielectric film inside the cavity of an open Fabry-Perot resonator, at an angle to its axis, will remove the polarizational degeneracy of the principal TEM_q00 oscillation modes. Upon excitation of such a resonator cavity by a plane wave, the reflected electromagnetic field is in general elliptically polarized. The shape of the resonance curve depends on the thickness of that film, on its orientation inside the cavity, on the conditions under which the cavity has been excited, and on the conditions under which the reflected signal appears in the receiver. Changing the polarization plane of the incident plane wave does not result in a smooth variation of the resonator Q factor.Translated from Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii, Radiofizika, Vol. 21, No. 11, pp. 1648–1652, November, 1978.