Fused silica as a composite nanostructured material

A method for calculating the refractive index of optical fused silica by applying the model of effective permittivity of composite homogeneous media is proposed and realized. The calculation was performed using the tabular data of the refractive index of crystalline α quartz and the ratio of the quartz glass and α quartz densities. It was suggested that fused silica contains nanosized pores with a glass filling number q immersed in a matrix with a density differing from the α quartz density by a factor of κ, where κ is slightly less than unity. It was established that the Maxwell-Garnett model makes it possible to calculate the refractive index of quartz glass and its dispersion in the transparency range (404 nm ≤ λ ≤ 671 nm) with a deviation less than 0.0002 from the tabular values. The calculated and experimental values coincide at q = 0.155 and κ = 0.986.