Optical modeling of the characteristics of dual reflective grating spatial heterodyne spectrometers for use in laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy

Abstract In the present work, we performed a combination of non-sequential ray tracing and numerical interferometric simulations to study the effect of the most important optical and experimental parameters on the performance of spatial heterodyne interferometric spectrometers, relevant to their use in laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (spatial heterodyne laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, SH-LIBS). We provide a detailed, numerical assessment of the spectral bandpass, tuning characteristics, spectral resolution, sensitivity and temporal gating achievable in such an instrument. These modeling results can pave the way for the construction of improved SH-LIBS spectrometers for elemental sensing.