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First stellar photons for an integrated optics discrete beam combiner at the William Herschel Telescope

Nayak, Abani Shankar; Labadie, Lucas; Sharma, Tarun Kumar; Piacentini, Simone; Corrielli, Giacomo; Osellame, Roberto; Gendron, Éric; Buey, Jean-Tristan M.; Chemla, Fanny; Cohen, Mathieu; Bharmal, Nazim A.; Bardou, Lisa F.; Staykov, Lazar; Osborn, James; Morris, Timothy J.; Pedretti, Ettore; Dinkelaker, Aline N.; Madhav, Kalaga V.; Roth, Martin M.

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Authors

Abani Shankar Nayak

Lucas Labadie

Tarun Kumar Sharma

Simone Piacentini

Giacomo Corrielli

Roberto Osellame

Éric Gendron

Jean-Tristan M. Buey

Fanny Chemla

Mathieu Cohen

Ettore Pedretti

Aline N. Dinkelaker

Kalaga V. Madhav

Martin M. Roth



Abstract

We present the first on-sky results of a four-telescope integrated optics discrete beam combiner (DBC) tested at the 4.2 m William Herschel Telescope. The device consists of a four-input pupil remapper followed by a DBC and a 23-output reformatter. The whole device was written monolithically in a single alumino-borosilicate substrate using ultrafast laser inscription. The device was operated at astronomical H-band (1.6 µm), and a deformable mirror along with a microlens array was used to inject stellar photons into the device. We report the measured visibility amplitudes and closure phases obtained on Vega and Altair that are retrieved using the calibrated transfer matrix of the device. While the coherence function can be reconstructed, the on-sky results show significant dispersion from the expected values. Based on the analysis of comparable simulations, we find that such dispersion is largely caused by the limited signal-to-noise ratio of our observations. This constitutes a first step toward an improved validation of the DBC as a possible beam combination scheme for long-baseline interferometry.

Citation

Nayak, A. S., Labadie, L., Sharma, T. K., Piacentini, S., Corrielli, G., Osellame, R., …Roth, M. M. (2021). First stellar photons for an integrated optics discrete beam combiner at the William Herschel Telescope. Applied Optics, 60(19), D129-D142. https://doi.org/10.1364/ao.423881

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jun 13, 2021
Online Publication Date Jun 14, 2021
Publication Date 2021-07
Deposit Date Jul 19, 2021
Publicly Available Date Jan 20, 2022
Journal Applied Optics
Print ISSN 1559-128X
Electronic ISSN 2155-3165
Publisher Optica
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 60
Issue 19
Article Number D129
Pages D129-D142
DOI https://doi.org/10.1364/ao.423881

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

Copyright Statement
Published by The Optical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.





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