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High-spectral-resolution-lidar (HSRL) can realize the retrieval with high accuracy of aerosol optical properties without the assumption of atmospheric conditions, in which the key technique is to construct a spectral discriminator for separating aerosol Mie scattering signals and molecular Rayleigh scattering signals. Both Mach-Zehnder interferometer and Fabry-Perot interferometer have been developed and applied in the HSRLs, as they can provide the fine spectral structure in signal separation. In this paper, we make the performance comparison between the Mach-Zehnder interferometer and Fabry-Perot interferometer from the points of view of single-frequency HSRL and multi-longitudinalmode HSRL. The simulation results show that the design parameters of Mach-Zehnder interferometer and Fabry-Perot interferometer are different as the spectral discriminator in the design of HSRL to separate aerosol Mie scattering signals and molecular Rayleigh scattering signals. Meanwhile, to match the free spectral range of optical interferometer with the laser longitudinal mode interval in the multi-longitudinal-mode HSRL, Mach-Zehnder interferometer is a better choice compared with Fabry-Perot interferometer, although both can provide the periodic spectral transmittance functions.
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