Abstract
Many physical and chemical processes of interest evolve on timescales that push the limits of conventional spec troscopic instrumentation. Indeed, the temporal resolution of standard spectrometers is often insufficient to track these dynamics, which is connected to the fact that most systems rely on frame-based sensors, imposing funda mental constraints on acquisition speed, sensitivity, and data efficiency, frequently limiting practical operation to the kilohertz regime. In this work, we present an approach to circumvent this limitation by developing an event-based spectrometer to enable spectral reconstruction with microsecond temporal resolution by leveraging a Czerny-Turner configuration combined with asynchronous and event-driven sensing. A dedicated signal process ing pipeline converts the resulting stream of binary events into calibrated spectra through temporal accumulation, geometric correction, and vertical spatial integration of the spectral line, covering a 234 nm bandwidth in the visible range with an estimated spectral dispersion of approximately 0.18 nm per pixel. Performance characteri zation under temporally modulated illumination demonstrates that the event-based spectrometer can reconstruct spectra at probing rates of up to tens of kilohertz, far exceeding the practical limits of a conventional frame-based spectrometer operated in parallel, while accurately preserving spectral peak positions and relative spectral fea tures. Finally, to further illustrate its potential applications, the system is validated in a microfluidic experiment integrated into an inverted microscope, where spectral changes induced by an absorbing dye are tracked with higher temporal fidelity and resolution compared with the frame-based approach. These results establish event-based spectroscopy as a promising paradigm for real-time, high-temporal-resolution spectral measurements in dynamic and low-light applications.