First light of the FIRST visible fibered interferometer upgrade at the Subaru telescope
Kevin Barjot

TL;DR
The paper reports on the first on-sky results of an upgraded fibered interferometer at Subaru, using integrated optics to enhance stability and sensitivity for high-contrast imaging and spectroscopy below the diffraction limit.
Contribution
It introduces the first on-sky demonstration of a visible-wavelength photonic chip beam combiner integrated into the FIRSTv2 interferometer at Subaru.
Findings
Successful on-sky testing of the photonic chip in FIRSTv2
Improved stability and sensitivity with integrated optics technology
Enhanced capability for detecting close companions like exoplanets
Abstract
FIRSTv2 (Fibered Imager foR a Single Telescope version 2) is the upgrade of a post-AO spectro-interferometer (FIRST) that enables high contrast imaging and spectroscopy at spatial scales below the diffraction limit of a single telescope. FIRST is currently installed, and routinely used, on the Subaru telescope as a module of the Subaru Extreme AO (SCExAO) platform. It achieves sensitivity and accuracy by a unique combination of sparse aperture masking, spatial filtering by single-mode fibers and cross-dispersion in the visible (600-900nm). The ongoing upgrade aims at using a photonic chip beam combiner, allowing the measurement of the complex visibility for every baseline independently. Using the integrated optics technology will increase the stability and sensitivity, and thus improve the dynamic range. Integrated optics chips working in the visible wavelength range are challenging (in…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsAdaptive optics and wavefront sensing · Astronomy and Astrophysical Research · Advanced optical system design
