Abstract

The mathematical design of an interference filter meeting given optical specifications is a complicated global optimization problem for an appropriately defined figure of quality which in general depends in a multimodal fashion on the layer thicknesses and the assignment of the available optical materials to the layers. In the past methods of global optimization including cluster analysis, random search, simulated annealing, genetic and evolutionary algorithms have been brought to bear on this problem in the optics literature. For a review of these methods from a more mathematical point of view we recommend ref.1,2.

© 1995 Optical Society of America