A Unified Approach for Determining Optical and Quantum Multilayer Thin Film Reflectance and Transmittance

In this paper we present a unified approach for determining the reflectance and transmittance properties of single-layer and multilayer optical and quantum thin-film structures using a unified set of equations based on the similarity of classical Maxwell and newly formulated relativistic Dirac vector field equations. A review of these field equations and the corresponding wave equations is presented. Electromagnetic plane-wave and quantum mechanical matter-wave solutions that satisfy these equations and their properties are reviewed. Single-layer optical and quantum thin film analyses lead to a unified set of analytical equations that predict their reflectance and transmittance characteristics. A unified theory conversion table describes how to convert classical electrodynamic quantities into relativistic quantum mechanical quantities to usea set of unified equations. The unified approach was extended to multilayer optical and quantum mechanical thin-film structures. Numerical results are presented for single-layer and multilayer optical and quantum thin film architectures. MATLAB software was employed for computations and graphics.