Effective monitoring of tropospheric ozone requires lidar systems, operation of which depends on the quality of dielectric mirrors used in the UV region, where traditional coatings are subject to accelerated degradation. We have designed a dielectric mirror with high reflectance at a wavelength of 266 nm for UV lidar systems for ozone monitoring. A multilayer interference coating was manufactured based on HfO2 and SiO2 and optimized using experimental dispersion data. The effect of thermal annealing on the optical properties of the coating is studied, and a temperature threshold is detected, above which the coating structure degrades. The results can be used in the design of highly efficient optical elements for UV differential absorption lidars and other laser systems which require UV dielectric mirrors.
Kuznetsov et al. (Wed,) studied this question.