Collaborative Research: Mastering the photonic lantern: The key to transformative diffraction-limited spectroscopy

合作研究：掌握光子灯笼：变革性衍射极限光谱学的关键

• 批准号: 2109232
• 负责人: Michael Fitzgerald
• 金额: $ 21.2万
• 依托单位: University of California-Los Angeles
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-09-01 至 2024-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2109232&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Mastering; photonic; lantern

This project aims to advance a key technology known as a “photonic lantern.” Photonic lanterns will allow for compact and stable spectrographs behind large telescopes. These spectrographs will deliver extremely precise measurements of various astronomical objects, most notably planets around other stars. The work to advance photonic lanterns will proceed in several key ways. First, to understand how to use lanterns to efficiently capture light from a large telescope. Second, to demonstrate that lanterns can sense the shape of light waves after they are affected by Earth’s atmosphere. This will enable correction for those shape errors and maximize the amount of light captured. Finally, to explore the potential of using a lantern for making images and measuring positions of astronomical objects. This work will also be directly applicable to telecommunications and free-space optical communications. Lanterns could play a key role in increasing the data volume and fidelity of data transfer with satellites. Operating at the diffraction-limit breaks traditional seeing-limited instrument scaling laws and allows a spectrograph to be the most compact for a given set of specifications. A compact instrument uses optics that are more likely to be manufacturable and of higher quality, is more robust to mechanical deflections, easier to thermally stabilize, and costs less. A Photonic Lantern (PL) allows conversion of a multi-mode fiber input to multiple single-mode fibers, thus enabling greater coupling at the input while maintaining the diffraction-limit into the spectrograph thus maintaining an ultra-stable spectral line-spread function (i.e. the shape does not vary with time or input illumination conditions). The project seeks to understand how to efficiently inject light into PLs from wavefronts partially corrected by adaptive optics. Further it will investigate if PLs can be used as focal-plane wavefront sensors, eliminating non-common path and chromatic errors, and boosting system efficiency Finally, the ability to use lanterns to do imaging and astrometry by separating the coherent and incoherent parts of the electric field will be investigated. The outcomes from this project could have immediate significant impact on existing and future spectrographs on large telescopes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该项目旨在推进一项被称为“光子灯”的关键技术。光子灯将允许在大型望远镜后面安装紧凑而稳定的光谱仪。这些摄谱仪将提供各种天文物体的极其精确的测量结果，尤其是围绕其他恒星运行的行星。推进光子灯的工作将在几个关键方面进行。首先，了解如何使用灯笼来有效地捕捉大型望远镜发出的光。第二，证明灯笼在受到地球大气的影响后可以感知光波的形状。这将使那些形状错误的纠正和最大限度地提高光捕获量。最后，探索利用灯笼制作图像和测量天文物体位置的潜力。这项工作也将直接适用于电信和自由空间光通信。灯笼可以在增加数据量和卫星数据传输保真度方面发挥关键作用。在衍射极限操作打破了传统的观察限制仪器缩放规律，并允许光谱仪是最紧凑的一组给定的规格。紧凑型仪器使用的光学元件更容易制造，质量更高，对机械偏转更坚固，更容易热稳定，成本更低。光子灯（PL）允许将多模光纤输入转换为多个单模光纤，从而在输入端实现更大的耦合，同时保持对光谱仪的衍射极限，从而保持超稳定的谱线扩展函数（即形状不随时间或输入照明条件而变化）。该项目旨在了解如何有效地从自适应光学部分校正的波前注入光到PLs。进一步，它将研究PLs是否可以用作焦平面波前传感器，消除非共程和色差，提高系统效率。最后，将研究通过分离电场的相干和非相干部分，使用灯笼进行成像和天体测量的能力。这个项目的结果可能会对现有的和未来的大型望远镜上的光谱仪产生直接的重大影响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

项目成果

Design considerations of photonic lanterns for diffraction-limited spectrometry

用于衍射极限光谱测量的光子灯的设计考虑

• DOI: 10.1364/josab.423664
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: Journal of the Optical Society of America B
• 作者: Lin, Jonathan;Jovanovic, Nemanja;Fitzgerald, Michael P.
• 通讯作者: Fitzgerald, Michael P.

Focal-plane wavefront sensing with photonic lanterns: theoretical framework

使用光子灯的焦平面波前传感：理论框架

• DOI: 10.1364/josab.466227
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: Journal of the Optical Society of America B
• 作者: Lin, Jonathan;Fitzgerald, Michael P.;Xin, Yinzi;Guyon, Olivier;Leon-Saval, Sergio;Norris, Barnaby;Jovanovic, Nemanja
• 通讯作者: Jovanovic, Nemanja

Focal-plane wavefront sensing with photonic lanterns II: numerical characterization and optimization

• DOI: 10.1364/josab.502962
• 发表时间: 2023-10
• 期刊: Journal of the Optical Society of America B
• 作者: Jonathan Lin;Michael P. Fitzgerald;Yinzi Xin;Yoo Jung Kim;O. Guyon;Sergio Leon-Saval;B. Norris;N. Jovanovic

Efficient Detection and Characterization of Exoplanets within the Diffraction Limit: Nulling with a Mode-selective Photonic Lantern

在衍射极限内有效检测和表征系外行星：使用模式选择性光子灯笼进行归零

• DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac9284
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: The Astrophysical Journal
• 作者: Xin, Yinzi;Jovanovic, Nemanja;Ruane, Garreth;Mawet, Dimitri;Fitzgerald, Michael P.;Echeverri, Daniel;Lin, Jonathan;Leon-Saval, Sergio;Gatkine, Pradip;Kim, Yoo Jung
• 通讯作者: Kim, Yoo Jung