Abstract

Presently, the technology of magnetooptics seems to hold the most promise in the area of erasable optical data storage. As noted by several authors^1,2, the performance of a magnetooptical disk in terms of the readout signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) depends critically on the multilayer film structure of the disk. However, in optimizing this structure to give the highest SNR, calculations of relevant optical parameters have usually only been made for the case of normally incident plane-waves. This is clearly only an approximation since, in low f-number systems, rays strike the disk surface at angles of incidence of up to 40 or 50 degrees³. In this paper, we investigate the role of angle of incidence in structural optimization.

© 1987 Optical Society of America