title: Accurate calculation of reflectance spectra for thick one-dimensional inhomogeneous optical structures and media: stable propagation matrix method.
abstract: Numerical instability is usually observed when the propagation matrix method is used to calculate the reflectance and transmittance spectra for the thick one-dimensional inhomogeneous optical structures and media. To remove this numerical instability we applied two procedures, the normalization and the singular-value decomposition, for the propagation matrix and the matrix involved in calculating the matrix of reflection coefficients, respectively. Examples of a cholesteric liquid crystal and a helical structure of ferroelectric liquid crystals with a twist defect show that the modified propagation matrix method is able to accurately calculate the reflectance spectra for thick structures.
authors.affiliation: Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA. zhaolu@cornell.edu
authors.forename: Zhao
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Lu