Polish device for FOCCoS/PFS slit system

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel polishing procedure for the FOCCoS/PFS slit system's optical fibers, achieving high-quality, optically flat surfaces efficiently through a specialized cylindrical polishing method.

Contribution

It introduces a new high-quality polishing technique using cylindrical concave bases and refractory oxide composites, significantly reducing polishing time while maintaining surface quality.

Findings

Surface roughness of 0.01 microns achieved

Polishing time reduced by a factor of ten

High optical quality surfaces verified by microscopy

Abstract

The Fiber Optical Cable and Connector System, FOCCoS, for the Prime Focus Spectrograph, PFS, is responsible for transporting light from the Subaru Telescope focal plane to a set of four spectrographs. Each spectrograph will be fed by a convex curved slit with 616 optical fibers organized in a linear arrangement. The slit frontal surface is covered with a special dark composite, made with refractory oxide, which is able to sustain its properties with minimum quantities of abrasives during the polishing process; this stability is obtained This stability is obtained by the detachment of the refractory oxide nanoparticles, which then gently reinforce gently the polishing process and increase its the efficiency. The surface roughness measured in several samples after high performance polishing was about 0.01 microns. Furthermore, the time for obtaining a polished surface with this quality is about 10 times less than the time required for polishing a brass, glass or ceramic surface of the same size. In this paper, we describe the procedure developed for high quality polishing of this type of slit. The cylindrical polishing described here, uses cylindrical concave metal bases on which glass paper is based. The polishing process consists to use grid sequences of 30 microns, 12 microns, 9 microns, 5 microns, 3 microns, 1 micron and, finally, a colloidal silica on a chemical cloth. To obtain the maximum throughput, the surface of the fibers should be polished in such a way that they are optically flat and free from scratches. The optical fibers are inspected with a microscope at all stages of the polishing process to ensure high quality. The efficiency of the process may be improved by using a cylindrical concave composite base as a substrate suitable for diamond liquid solutions. Despite this process being completely by hand, the final result shows a very high quality.