Abstract

Over the years Photonics technologies have mainly been developed to satisfy the ever increasing demand for high-bandwidth/bit-rates imposed by mass media in general, with low losses and costs. These communication technology applications have been developed around an optical communication window centred at 1550nm wavelength with a span of ~ 40nm, taking advantage of the low losses of silica optical fibres in this region. It is a great challenge to tailor these existing photonics technologies for use in Astrophysics or Astronomy (Astrophotonics) where an ultra-wide wavelength range spanning from ~ 400-2000nm, with low losses and costs, is required. We present the ongoing developments at innoFSPEC to use integrated photonics (IPs) beyond communication to solve the scaling problem of conventional astronomical instruments (growth of instrument size in proportion to telescope aperture D and the increase of cost as D² [1]). We will also exploit the miniature form of the multifunctional integrated planar light wave circuit to offer high stability, low sensitivity to vibrations and temperature fluctuations with low maintenance costs. One of the key devices that we envisage to design and fabricate with proper choice of material system is an Integrate Photonic Spectrograph (IPS) to disperse faint optical signals received from telescopes and project the output spectrum on to the detector with properly design optical element to achieve required spatial resolution. Moreover, UV-induced Bragg-grating inscription technology on planar IPs [2] could be used to fabricate integrated optical filters to suppress unwanted background [1] and further enhance the compactness, reduce cost, and increase the stability against environmental perturbations of these devices.

© 2011 IEEE