  There exists a fundamental tradeoff between spectral resolution and the
efficiency or throughput for all optical spectrometers. The primary factors
affecting the spectral resolution and throughput of an optical spectrometer are
the size of the entrance aperture and the optical power of the focusing
element. Thus far collective optimization of the above mentioned has proven
difficult. Here, we introduce the concept of high-throughput computational
slits (HTCS), a numerical technique for improving both the effective spectral
resolution and efficiency of a spectrometer. The proposed HTCS approach was
experimentally validated using an optical spectrometer configured with a 200 um
entrance aperture, test, and a 50 um entrance aperture, control, demonstrating
improvements in spectral resolution of the spectrum by ~ 50% over the control
spectral resolution and improvements in efficiency of > 2 times over the
efficiency of the largest entrance aperture used in the study while producing
highly accurate spectra.
