Standing wave spectrometer.

A standing wave Fourier transform spectrometer is realized. The spectrometer consists of an ultra thin and partially transparent photodetector and a tunable mirror. The incident light forms a standing wave in front of the mirror, which is sampled by the ultra thin optical detector. The thickness of the photodetector is significantly smaller than the wavelength of the incident light. The spectral information of the incident light is determined by the Fourier transform of the detector signal. The linear arrangement of the optical detector and the mirror enables the realization of spectrometer arrays and optical cameras with high spectral resolution. For the first time a complete optical model of the standing wave spectrometer is presented and compared with experimental results. The influence of the design of the optical detector on the performance of the spectrometer is discussed.