Effect of /spl gamma/ irradiation on optical components

Optical components operating in radiation environments, like nuclear facilities, High Energy Physics and space experiments, are exposed to fluxes of energetic particles, which may deteriorate the image quality. In order to avoid undesired failure of such components that is due to changes produced in the material optical properties by the hostile conditions, it is useful to perform a preliminary investigation of the radiation induced damage on each material and on different types of optical components. In this work, coated optical components are investigated. A set of optical coatings were submitted to /spl gamma/ irradiation at the Calliope /sup 60/Co radioisotope source (Research Centre ENEA-Casaccia, Rome) in order to simulate the hostile radiation environment in which they could be employed. The behavior of different substrates, single-layer materials and multilayer optical coatings was investigated by comparing both transmittance and reflectance measurements before and after the /spl gamma/-ray exposure.