The optical thin films of SiO2, TiO2 and Al2O3 are prepared on GaAs substrates by using the electron beam evaporation method under different substrate temperatures and ion source energies, respectively. The stress distributions of these thin films are measured, and the refractive indexes of these thin films prepared under different ion source energies are also tested. The results show that, the surface stress distributions of these three kinds of thin films are non-uniform, and the substrate temperature and ion source energy can be adjusted to reduce the stresses of these thin films effectively. The average minimum stresses of SiO2, TiO2 and Al2O3 thin films are 2.9, 8.4 and 25.1 MPa, respectively.