Stratified, Isotropic Thin Films

The presence of a thin film, or a stack of films, at an interface will affect the polarization properties of reflected and transmitted light. The analysis for isotropic materials is simplified by the fact that the Jones matrix will not contain off-diagonal elements. This means that the reflection and transmission of p and s polarized light can be treated separately and these subscripts can be dropped in the description of the components of the electric vector. 

Here R.. j and T.. + j are the reflection and refraction coefficients defined in equations 

Equations (3.9), (3.12), and (3.16) are sufficient to calculate the reflection and refraction coefficients for a stratified structure of thin films. In writing the phase factors, 8(, 

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