Phase-compensated anti-reflective thin flim coating

1. An anti-reflective thin film coating formed on an optical surface, comprising a multilayer thin-film stack arranged to suppress reflection of incident polarized light within an incident light wavelength range, wherein the multilayer thin-film stack further provides a reflectance edge transition at a wavelength band that lies outside the incident light wavelength range, and wherein the reflectance edge transition is arranged to provide phase difference compensation to the polarized light within the incident polarized light wavelength range.

2. The anti-reflective thin film coating of claim 1 wherein the reflectance edge transition is located within less than 100 nm of the incident light wavelength range.

3. The anti-reflective thin film coating of claim 1 wherein the phase difference compensation provides phase differences of less than ±10 degrees.

4. The anti-reflective thin film coating of claim 1 wherein the phase difference compensation is provided with a phase difference performance based on parameters including the number of thin film layers, the refractive indices of the thin film layers, the ratio of the refractive indices of the thin film layers, the spectral position of edge transitions, or combinations thereof.

5. The anti-reflective thin film coating of claim 1 wherein the edge transition provides a change in reflectance between ≦5% reflectivity and ≧80% reflectivity in a narrow bandwidth of ≦30 nm.

6. The anti-reflective thin film coating of claim 1 wherein the provided phase difference compensation compensates for phase differences accumulated from one or more other optical elements.

7. The anti-reflective thin film coating of claim 6 wherein the other optical elements include at least one dichroic element having a dichroic coating.

8. The anti-reflective thin film coating of claim 7 wherein the dichroic coating is a bandpass filter coating or a pass edge filter coating.