Characteristics of reflection and transmission waveguide-grating filters

In this thesis new reflection and transmission filters are characterized for both the optical and microwave spectral regions. These guided-mode resonance filters are implemented by integrating diffraction gratings into classical thin-film multilayers to produce high efficiency filter response and arbitrarily-low sidebands extended over a large spectral range. Diffraction from phase-shifted gratings and gratings with different periods is analyzed using rigorous coupled-wave theory yielding a new approach to filter linewidth broadening, line-shaping, and multi-line filters. The single-grating transmission filters presented have a simplified design and a narrower linewidth than grating-enclosed designs while maintaining high peak transmittance and low sideband reflectance. A comparison with classical thin-film reflection filters shows that guided-mode resonance filters require significantly fewer layers to obtain narrow linewidth and high peak response. New high efficiency transmission and reflection microwave filters with only a few layers are shown to be realizable.