Antireflective surfaces use thin-film interference to cancel out light waves that would normally reflect at a boundary between two materials. By matching the refractive index and thickness of the coating layers to specific wavelengths, engineers maximize transmission through lenses and windows. Without this treatment, multiple uncoated surfaces in a system will rapidly degrade laser power and cause ghosting.
Make sure you order the antireflective windows tuned for 1064 nanometers, not the visible spectrum ones.
Also heard as
- AR
Related terms
AR coating
Antireflection coating: thin dielectric layers that cut surface reflections from about 4 percent to a fraction of a percent.
Thin-film interference
The optical phenomenon where light waves reflecting off the top and bottom boundaries of a thin coating interfere with each other.
Ghost
A weak stray beam from a back-surface reflection that travels off in an unexpected direction or focuses somewhere it should not.