Optical properties of stratified media with exponentially graded refractive index.

Reflectance and transmittance of electromagnetic radiation from an exponentially graded-index multilayer dielectric structure are investigated theoretically. It is shown that such a structure maximizes the optical transmission in the case in which this transmission is approximated by summing intensities. Transmittance and reflectance of coherent radiation are also calculated for both thick and thin layers and are compared with the ones obtained by incoherent summation.