Point defects in IBS coating for very low loss mirrors

High-reflective coatings are used in many physics experiments. Despite the high quality of the optical coating, the performances of the mirrors are altered by the scattered light induced by micrometer size defects in the coating layers. The topic of this paper is the study of the point-like scatterers present in the specific coating of the mirrors used in state-of-the-art, high-sensitivity optical experiments. We studied the behavior of the materials according to different thicknesses and the resulting defects after annealing. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first insight into the formation of such defects for different materials and thickness and how this is reduced when samples are annealed.