title: Measurement-efficient optical wavemeters.
abstract: We describe a method for efficiently determining the wavelength of a monochromatic source and provide an experimental proof-of-concept. The photomeasurement efficiency for a wavemeter can be written as eta(N,q) = (1 + logqN)/m, where N is the number of spectral channels, q is the number of distinguishable output levels per photodetector, and m is the actual number of photomeasurements made. An implementation is developed that achieves a theoretical efficiency of eta(N,q) = 1. The proof-of-concept experiment achieves efficiencies eta = O(1), where the deviation from theory is attributable to well-known optical effects and should be correctable in future versions.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Potuluri
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gehm
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sullivan
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Brady