On the assembly and calibration of a spatial heterodyne interferometer for limb sounding of the middle atmosphere

Abstract

Spatial heterodyne interferometers are an enabling technology to build highly miniaturized optical instruments for the observation of faint emissions in the atmosphere. They are particularly suited for the deployment on nano-or micro-satellite constellations. One application of the SHI technology is a middle atmosphere temperature sounder based on the measurement of relative intensities emitted by the O 2 atmospheric band system. Beside basic design considerations, aspects of the opto-mechanical design and assembly of a monolithic SHI for a space application are addressed. For the characterization of such an instrument, a light stimulus based on a Köhler illuminator is presented.

Optical design and straylight analyses of a spatial heterodyne interferometer for the measurement of atmospheric temperature from space

“…In the context of employing this system for spatially-resolved measurement of spectral information, from which temperature information is subsequently derived, 14 the calibration process holds special significance. 15 This work aims to address the importance of stray light in this context, as it can introduce disturbances affecting both the spatial information and the spectral sensitivity of the measurements.…”

Charge exchange spectroscopy using spatial heterodyne spectrometer in the large helical device

“…In contrast, a spatial heterodyne spectrometer (SHS) has the advantage of having field-widening prisms that rotate the image of the gratings such that it appears perpendicular to the optical axis and coincident at the output, allowing for a larger aperture size. 4,5 If the SHS is used, one can increase the number of photons collected without significantly degrading the spectral resolution.…”

Optical modeling of the characteristics of dual reflective grating spatial heterodyne spectrometers for use in laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy

“…[1,7,8]. Further developments and applications of spatial heterodyne spectroscopy mostly came in the astrophysics, planetary exploration and atmospheric spectroscopy fields, in which weak, slowly varying light sources/absorbers/scatterers are observed and a compact, robust spectroscopy instrumentation is very useful [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. Advantages of the application of the SHS concept have already been successfully demonstrated for emission [9][10][11][12]16,17], absorption [18] and Raman spectroscopy [8,14,15,19].…”

“…Further developments and applications of spatial heterodyne spectroscopy mostly came in the astrophysics, planetary exploration and atmospheric spectroscopy fields, in which weak, slowly varying light sources/absorbers/scatterers are observed and a compact, robust spectroscopy instrumentation is very useful [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. Advantages of the application of the SHS concept have already been successfully demonstrated for emission [9][10][11][12]16,17], absorption [18] and Raman spectroscopy [8,14,15,19]. Several modifications of the original SHS optical setup were proposed in the literature, such as the addition of prisms for increased field-of-view [20], a single grating variant for quick tuning [21], an all reflective (also known as cyclic) arrangement [11,12], the incorporation of blazed high-order diffraction grating (Echelle grating) as the beamsplitter and combiner [22], a large aperture static imaging variant (LASIS) [23], and others.…”