Talk:Perfect mirror

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Is this a theoretical concept or do they exist? Evercat 20:25, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Citations

Would be good to add some primary citation instead of just a PR item. Here are the articles I find by the researchers mentioned in the press release:

  1. Urbas, A., Fink, Y., Thomas, E. L., “One Dimensionally Periodic Dielectric Reflectors from self Assembled Block Copolymer-Homopolymer Blends”, Macromolecules, 32, 14, 4748-4750 (1999).
  2. Fink, Y., Winn J. N., Fan, S., Michel, J., Chen, C., Joannopoulos, J. D., Thomas, E. L., “A Dielectric Omnidirectional Reflector” Science 282, 1679-1682, (1998).
  3. Winn J. N., Fink, Y., Fan, S., Joannopoulos, J. D., “Omnidirectional Reflection from a One-Dimensional Photonic Crystal”, Optics Letters, 23, 20, 1573-1575, (1998).

Could someone with access to these articles figure out which (if any) actually report on an actual perfect mirror? Or else adjust the article to indicate exactly how "perfect" these actually are? Maybe check Citation Index to see what's been done since then? DMacks 19:25, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why

Why would anyone want a perfect mirror? Is it good for anything? Does it have any practical or theoretical uses?

There are many reasons someone might want to reflect all their light instead of losing some to mirrors. A different one for every situation, in fact. Nothing worse than finding out that you lose too much energy in your experiment to see whatever you're looking for: either have to buy a bigger laser or try to cut down on the number of lossy optics. — Laura Scudder ☎ 22:43, 29 January 2007 (UTC)