White light interferometry applied to wavelength calibration of spectrometers

Abstract

In this work, white light interferometry is applied to perform wavelength calibration of a dispersive spectrometer .The relation between wavelength and position in the spectrometer detector is obtained from the wavelength-dependent phase difference at the output of the interferometer. In the proposed method, no suppositions are made about the spectrum of the illumination source; it is only required to make a simple assumption about dispersion in the spectrometer to be measured and to perform a Taylor expansion of the phase difference. A sample of calibration of a home-made spectrometer serves to discuss different issues that affect the calibration.