Publications

  • Astrophotonics (AP)
  • Multi-Channel Spectroscopy (VKS)

Simulations of mode-selective photonic lanterns
Simulations of mode-selective photonic lanterns for efficient coupling of starlight into the single-mode regime
2021
Diab M.; Tripathi A.; Davenport J.; Dinkelaker A.N.; Madhav K.; Roth M.M.
In ground-based astronomy, starlight distorted by the atmosphere couples poorly into single-mode waveguides, but a correction by adaptive optics, even if only partial, can boost coupling into the few-mode regime, allowing the use of photonic lanterns to convert into multiple single-mode beams. Corrected wavefronts result in focal patterns that couple mostly with circularly symmetric waveguide modes. A mode-selective photonic lantern is hence proposed to convert multimode light into a subset of single-mode waveguides of the standard photonic lantern, thereby reducing the required number of outputs. We ran simulations to show that only two out of the six waveguides of a 1×6 photonic lantern carry >95% of the coupled light to the outputs at ?/?0<10 if the wavefront is partially corrected and the photonic lantern is made mode selective.
Journal Article

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