Use of a photonic lantern into an image plane fiber beam combiner

Ettore Pedretti, Alan Howard Greenaway, Robert R. Thomson, Paul A. Dalgarno*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

We investigate the use of photonic lanterns in a fibre beam-combiner. One of the problems of fibre combiners is that the single-mode fibres coupling is affected by the atmospheric seeing. This effect could be potentially mitigated using a photonic lantern. A photonic lantern converts the multi-mode input at the focal plane of a telescope to N single mode outputs. In presence of atmospheric seeing the light of the telescope will couple with one or more of the single-mode outputs unlike the current interferometers where coupling can be sporadic in bad seeing conditions. In a stellar interferometer each telescope focal plane could be coupled with a photonic lantern. After beam combination each single-mode outputs of the lantern will interfere with all the others. N single mode outputs from each lantern will make N non independent closure phases that can be averaged. Using this method the noise on the closure phase on independent baseline triangles could in principle be reduced by the square root of N.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationOptical and Infrared Interferometry and Imaging V
EditorsFabien Malbet, Michelle J. Creech-Eakman, Peter G. Tuthill
PublisherSPIE
ISBN (Electronic)9781510601949
ISBN (Print)9781510601932
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 4 Aug 2016

Publication series

NameProceedings of SPIE
PublisherSPIE
Volume9907
ISSN (Print)0277-786X

Keywords

  • Astrophotonics
  • Beam Combiners
  • Closure Phase.
  • Fibre Optics
  • Long-Baseline Interferometry
  • Photonic Lanterns
  • Stellar Interferometry

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
  • Condensed Matter Physics
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Applied Mathematics
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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