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Simulation and optimisation of an astrophotonic reformatter

Anagnos, Th; Harris, R.J.; Corrigan, M.K.; Reeves, A.P.; Townson, M.J.; MacLachlan, D.G.; Thomson, R.R.; Morris, T.J.; Schwab, C.; Quirrenbach, A.

Simulation and optimisation of an astrophotonic reformatter Thumbnail


Authors

Th Anagnos

R.J. Harris

M.K. Corrigan

A.P. Reeves

M.J. Townson

D.G. MacLachlan

R.R. Thomson

C. Schwab

A. Quirrenbach



Abstract

Image slicing is a powerful technique in astronomy. It allows the instrument designer to reduce the slit width of the spectrograph, increasing spectral resolving power whilst retaining throughput. Conventionally this is done using bulk optics, such as mirrors and prisms, however, more recently astrophotonic components known as photonic lanterns and photonic reformatters have also been used. These devices reformat the multimode input light from a telescope into single-mode outputs, which can then be re-arranged to suit the spectrograph. The photonic dicer (PD) is one such device, designed to reduce the dependence of spectrograph size on telescope aperture and eliminate modal noise. We simulate the PD, by optimizing the throughput and geometrical design using SOAPY and BEAMPROP. The simulated device shows a transmission between 8 and 20  per cent, depending upon the type of adaptive optics correction applied, matching the experimental results well. We also investigate our idealized model of the PD and show that the barycentre of the slit varies only slightly with time, meaning that the modal noise contribution is very low when compared to conventional fibre systems. We further optimize our model device for both higher throughput and reduced modal noise. This device improves throughput by 6.4  per cent and reduces the movement of the slit output by 50 per cent, further improving stability. This shows the importance of properly simulating such devices, including atmospheric effects. Our work complements recent work in the field and is essential for optimizing future photonic reformatters.

Citation

Anagnos, T., Harris, R., Corrigan, M., Reeves, A., Townson, M., MacLachlan, D., …Quirrenbach, A. (2018). Simulation and optimisation of an astrophotonic reformatter. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 478(4), 4881-4889. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty1396

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date May 23, 2018
Online Publication Date May 28, 2018
Publication Date Aug 21, 2018
Deposit Date Aug 9, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
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 478
Issue 4
Pages 4881-4889
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty1396

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Astronomical Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.





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