Fibre modal power distributions in astronomy and their application to OH-suppression fibres

Corbett, J.; Butterley, T.; Allington-Smith, J.R.

doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.11765.x

Fibre modal power distributions in astronomy and their application to OH-suppression fibres

Corbett, J.; Butterley, T.; Allington-Smith, J.R.

Authors

J. Corbett

T. Butterley

J.R. Allington-Smith

Abstract

Knowledge of the modal power distribution (MPD) in multimode optical fibre is crucial for the design of OH-suppressing fibre systems based on single-mode fibre arrays. MPDs allow us to estimate the minimum number of modes required to provide good data quality for astronomy so that we can reduce the size and cost of the single-mode array. This paper shows how the MPD of multimode fibres changes when fed with the telescope point spread function and when illuminated with an image of the telescope exit pupil via a field lenslet under conditions of ideal, natural and partially corrected seeing. We show that OH-suppressing fibres operating at 800 nm require arrays of single-mode fibres that will be challenging to manufacture. The complete J and H bands, however, require as few as 40–80 modes.

Citation

Corbett, J., Butterley, T., & Allington-Smith, J. (2007). Fibre modal power distributions in astronomy and their application to OH-suppression fibres. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 378(2), 482-492. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.11765.x

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	Jun 21, 2007
Deposit Date	Feb 20, 2015
Publicly Available Date	Feb 20, 2015
Journal	Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Print ISSN	0035-8711
Electronic ISSN	1365-2966
Publisher	Royal Astronomical Society
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	378
Issue	2
Pages	482-492
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.11765.x
Keywords	Atmospheric effects, Instrumentation: spectrographs, Techniques: spectroscopic.

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This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2007 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.