Development of integrated mode reformatting components for diffraction-limited spectroscopy

TL;DR

This paper reports on the development of integrated photonic devices that reformat multimode light into a diffraction-limited pseudo-slit, enabling compact, high-resolution spectrographs free of modal noise.

Contribution

Introduction of fully integrated photonic dicers for efficient multimode to diffraction-limited light reformatting in spectroscopy.

Findings

Successful fabrication of integrated photonic dicers

Demonstration of coupling seeing-limited light to diffraction-limited spectrographs

Potential for reducing modal noise in high-resolution spectroscopy

Abstract

We present the results of our work on developing fully integrated devices (photonic dicers) for reformatting multimode light to a diffraction limited pseudo-slit. These devices can be used to couple a seeing-limited telescope point-spread-function to a spectrograph operating at the diffraction limit, thus enabling compact, high-resolution spectrographs that are free of modal-noise.