Construction of a setup for dispersion measurements on multilayer structures.

Abstract: Dispersion is a rather unavoidable phenomenon that occurs when using semiconductor, multilayer mirrors for experiments with mode-locked lasers. Due to unknown dispersion, the laser pulses may not be stable which results in unwanted laser pulse properties. This is especially the case when the light source is of a broadband characteristic, consisting of several wavelengths. However, if the dispersion of a semiconductor multilayer mirror is known, these unwanted effects can be considered, making the experiment efficient and the results more analysable. The goal of this Bachelor thesis has been to construct a setup for dispersion measurements of semiconductor multilayer mirrors, and to perform analysis to determine the dispersion. The setup constructed is a Michelson-interferometer with a white light source to analyse the mirrors in a broadband spectrum, and the analysis is done by using a Windowed Fourier Transform procedure.