Grating Spectrometry and Spatial Heterodyne Fourier Transform Spectrometry: Comparative Noise Analysis for Raman Measurements.

The desire for portable Raman spectrometers is continuously driving the development of novel spectrometer architectures where miniaturisation can be achieved without the penalty of a poorer detection performance. Spatial heterodyne spectrometers are emerging as potential candidates for challenging the dominance of traditional grating spectrometers, thanks to their larger etendue and greater potential for miniaturisation. This paper provides a generic analytical model for estimating and comparing the detection performance of Raman spectrometers based on grating spectrometer and spatial heterodyne spectrometer designs by deriving the analytical expressions for the performance estimator (signal-to-noise ratio, SNR) for both types of spectrometers.

Compact spatially heterodyned static interferometer.

This paper presents a novel, to the best of our knowledge, and simple technique for achieving a higher spectral resolution in classical static Fourier transform spectrometers. This is achieved by heterodyning the frequency of a standard interferogram to a lower spatial frequency by placing a single transmission grating at the image plane of two mutually coherent beams produced by the interferometer. The grating splits the beams into diffraction orders, which overlap to produce the heterodyned interferogram, similar to that seen in techniques such as spatial heterodyne spectroscopy.