STATIONARY FOURIER TRANSFORM SPECTROMETER FOR USE AS A TEACHING TOOL

We report the design of a Fourier transform spectrometer with no moving parts. Its ease of alignment and inherent immunity to vibration make it an ideal instrument for use within the university teaching laboratory. A birefringent component is used to introduce a path difference which varies across the input aperture, and hence the interferogram is obtained in the spatial rather than the temporal domain. By way of example we present some spectra obtained from the instrument and suggest a number of experiments that give the student a heuristic appreciation of the Fourier transform function.