Calibration of the Ocean Optics USB2000 Spectrometer
Author:
ZHENG CHUEN WONGMentors:
- ALEC SIM, Professor of Physics, Irvine Valley College
- ROY MCCORD, Professor of Astronomy, Irvine Valley College
CALIBRATION OF THE OCEAN OPTICS USB2000 SPECTROMETER ZHENG C. WONG, ALEC M. SIM, ROY MCCORD ABSTRACT We present a detailed model and analysis for calibration of the Ocean Optics USB2000 spectrometer. This process is achieved by observing a set of well-defined gas lamp sources. The calibration procedure provided by Ocean Optics requires the use of the following polynomial equation, λp = I + C1 p + C2 p2 + C3 p3 ,in fitting gas lamp data to obtain calibration coefficients. Early results have shown that very accurate spectral sources are needed to obtain high quality calibration coefficients. We present the results of the calibration process and compare our results with the data obtained from the National Institute of Science and Technology’s database (NIST). With the corresponding data, we can re-configure the coefficients of the shifted wavelengths. We find that at higher intensities of wavelength measurements, the fluctuations of errors becomes higher, ≥ δ ±1.00nm repetitively. At lower wavelength intensities, we show that all recorded errors at this stage are minimal and could not provide an explanation for such large discrepancies at higher intensity wavelengths. We argue that the coil of loops of the fiber optic cable and its numerical aperture (NA) may have a significant influence on our reported errors. Modeling of the experiment is needed to quantify the above situation and to obtain a minimal calibration error. Subject headings: spectrometer: calibration – wavelengths – errors – fiber optic cables