Electronic stabilization of scanning interferometers.
A quantitative relation for the drift error of a digital scanning spectrometer in a self-stabilizing mode is developed. Using a spectral prominence as a tracking reference, it is found that the error channel gain that provides minimum error is determined by the intensity and spectral width of the prominence. It is then shown that the self-noise of photon-counting detectors limits the ability of the system to retain stabilization in the face of drift rate errors, and a scanning strategy must be employed. The characteristics and scan strategies of a typical spectrometer system are then illustrated.
Carleton
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