TRANSIENT EVENT-LOCKED FOURIER SPECTROSCOPY

A low-cost method of adding time-resolving capability to commercial Fo urier-transform spectrometers with a continuously scanning Michelson i nterferometer has been developed. It achieves accurate timing by locki ng the sampling to the transient events and thus eliminates noise and artifacts caused by mirror-speed variations in the interferometer. Thi s acquisition method is accompanied by a novel mathematical algorithm for extracting the spectral information from the data. The method has been used from the far IR to the UV at resolutions up to 0.1 cm(-1).