A heterodyne optical spectroscopy system comprises a light source that acts as a local oscillator (LO); a beam splitting component that generates a reference beam from the LO; a signal component that generates a sample signal from a sample; a beam blocker that can turn off the sample signal to generate blank shots; a composite signal detection subsystem that detects a heterodyned signal that is a mix of the sample signal and a portion of the LO; a composite reference detection subsystem synchronized to the signal detection subsystem to detect a portion of the reference beam; and a processor that processes digital signals from the signal detection subsystem and the reference detection subsystem. A very versatile reference scheme is developed to treat different heterodyne spectroscopies in a unified way, which achieves optimal noise suppression.
General noise suppression scheme with reference detection in optical heterodyne spectroscopy