Abstract

The performance of a standard Michelson interferometer is degraded by disturbances that cause the interferogram signal to be sampled at nonconstant time intervals. A formula that shows how the power spectrum of the random disturbances interacts with the signal to contaminate different regions of the measured spectrum is derived for the spectral noise. The sampling noise does not look conventionally noiselike because it is correlated over large regions of the measured spectrum, and adjustment of the unbalanced background interferogram to match the size of the balanced background interferogram minimizes the sampling-noise amplitude.

© 1999 Optical Society of America

Performance degradation of a Michelson interferometer when its misalignment angle is a rapidly varying, random time series

Douglas L. Cohen
Appl. Opt. 36(18) 4034-4042 (1997)

Noise-equivalent change in radiance for sampling noise in a double-sided interferogram

Douglas L. Cohen
Appl. Opt. 42(13) 2289-2300 (2003)

Noise-equivalent change in radiance for misalignment noise in a double-sided interferogram

Douglas L. Cohen
Appl. Opt. 42(31) 6292-6304 (2003)

Spectral noise due to sampling errors in Fourier-transform spectroscopy

Luca Palchetti and Davide Lastrucci
Appl. Opt. 40(19) 3235-3243 (2001)

Michelson interferometer for precision angle measurement

Masroor Ikram and Ghazanfar Hussain
Appl. Opt. 38(1) 113-120 (1999)