Electric fields in multilayers at oblique incidence.

The recursion equation for electric field strength in a multilayer thin film system yields only the tangential component of the field. This paper discusses the relationship between the tangential component, the peak value, and the time average value of the total electric field for the two planes of polarization. This approach leads to easy understanding of the discontinuous field strength for p polarization and the relationship between the peak and time average field strengths. The results are applied to a polarizing beam splitter of the type used with high energy lasers.