Optics Express Feature Announcement
Recent Advances in Astrophotonics
Submission Opens:1 April 2017
Submission Deadline: 1 May 2017
This Optics Express feature issue on Astrophotonics will consist of solicited and unsolicited papers from world-leading groups in the development and application of cutting-edge astrophotonic technologies.
The field of astrophotonics applies novel photonic concepts to astronomical instrumentation, with the overall aim of enabling improved astronomical instruments with unprecedented precision, flexibility, and multiplex gain. Although astronomy can leverage the massive investment that has been made in photonic technologies over the last approximately half a century, the field of astrophotonics is also driving the development of entirely new photonic technologies. Devices using optical fiber or waveguides as the platform can manipulate light with increasing complexity including spatially reshaping and rerouting, spectrally filtering, spectrally dispersing and combining using phase preservation. Successful demonstrations of these technologies include spatial reshaping of light in the "photonic lantern," which enables the efficient coupling of incoherent multimode light to single mode photonic devices and spectral filtering with ultra-broadband fiber Bragg-gratings of unprecedented complexity, in order to block undesirable atmospheric spectral lines from entering a spectrograph. Further demonstrations of astrophotonic technologies include the use of high gain fiber scramblers for high-resolution spectrographs, frequency combs for unprecedented spectral calibration, or integrated active/passive photonics functions for stellar Interferometry.
These technologies are now finding spin-off applications in areas such as telecommunications and remote sensing, and it is clear that astrophotonics is both a utilizer and driver of advanced photonic technologies.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Photonic integrated spectrographs (arrayed waveguides and echelle gratings on-chip)
- On-chip beam combiners and interferometry
- Multi-mode to single-mode fiber transitions (e.g., photonic lanterns)
- Pupil remappers
- Developments in mid-IR photonics for astronomy
- OH suppression gratings (fiber-based and in waveguides)
- Fiber incoherent and coherent imaging bundles
- Frequency combs
- Mode scramblers
- Space photonics
The standard Article Processing Charges for Optics Express will apply to all papers. Papers will be published online upon acceptance. Manuscripts must be prepared according to the standard author instructions for submission to Optics Express and must be submitted online through OSA's online submission system. When submitting, authors must specify that the manuscript is for the feature issue on Astrophotonics.
Feature Issue Editors
Julia Bryant, University of Sydney, Australia
Robert Thomson, Heriot-Watt University, UK
Michael Withford, Macquarie University, Australia