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In recent years there has been much interest concerning the development of modulators in the mid- to long-wave infrared, based on emerging materials such as graphene. These have been frequently pursued for optical communications, though also for other specialized applications such as infrared scene projectors. Here we investigate a new application for graphene modulators in the mid- to long-wave infrared. We demonstrate, for the first time, computational spectroscopy in the mid- to long-wave infrared using a graphene-based metasurface modulator. Furthermore, our metasurface device operates at low gate voltage. To demonstrate computational spectroscopy, we provide our algorithm with the measured reflection spectra of the modulator at different gate voltages. We also provide it with the measured reflected light power as a function of the gate voltage. The algorithm then estimates the input spectrum. We show that the reconstructed spectrum is in good agreement with that measured directly by a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer, with a normalized mean-absolute-error (NMAE) of 0.021. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Miniaturized spectrometers are advantageous for many applications and can be achieved by what we term the filter-array detector-array (FADA) approach. In this method, each element of an optical filter array filters the light that is transmitted to the matching element of a photodetector array. By providing the outputs of the photodetector array and the filter transmission functions to a reconstruction algorithm, the spectrum of the light illuminating the FADA device can be estimated. Here, we experimentally demonstrate an array of 101 band-pass transmission filters that span the mid- to long-wave infrared (6.2 to 14.2 μm). Each filter comprises a sub-wavelength array of coaxial apertures in a gold film. As a proof-of-principle demonstration of the FADA approach, we use a Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) microscope to record the optical power transmitted through each filter. We provide this information, along with the transmission spectra of the filters, to a recursive least squares (RLS) algorithm that estimates the incident spectrum. We reconstruct the spectrum of the infrared light source of our FTIR and the transmission spectra of three polymer-type materials: polyethylene, cellophane and polyvinyl chloride. Reconstructed spectra are in very good agreement with those obtained via direct measurement by our FTIR system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]