Multiple receivers in a high-resolution near-infrared heterodyne spectrometer

The paper describes a modification of a high-resolution heterodyne NIR spectrometer described by Rodin, et al. in Opt. Express 22, 13825 (2014), wherein the noise amplitude of the heterodyne signal squared was proportional to the power of the incoherent radiation source (the sun). The addition of a second receiver collecting radiation from the sun into a second single-mode fiber created up to a factor of two increase in detected source power spectrum. The ability to add uncorrelated heterodyne IF signals as Gaussian noise (variance) provides the means by which multiple heterodyne receivers of signal from an incoherent source can increase the detected source power by the same multiple, thus avoiding the limit imposed by the antenna theorem for a single receiver (A. E. Siegman, Appl. Opt. 5, 1588 (1966)). (C) 2016 Optical Society of America