UC San Diego

Compact spectrometers are crucial in areas where size and weight may need to be minimized. These types of spectrometers often contain no moving parts, which makes for an instrument that can be highly durable. With the recent proliferation in low-cost and high-resolution cameras, camera-based spectrometry methods have the potential to make portable spectrometers small, ubiquitous, and cheap. Here, we demonstrate a novel method for compact spectrometry that uses an array of etalons to perform spectral encoding, and uses a reconstruction algorithm to recover the incident spectrum. This spectrometer has the unique capability for both high resolution and a large working bandwidth without sacrificing sensitivity, and we anticipate that its simplicity makes it an excellent candidate whenever a compact, robust, and flexible spectrometry solution is needed.