Collaborative Research: A Tunable Astrophotonic Spectrometer with Adaptive Faint-Source Extraction

未来的望远镜仪器将能够同时收集和处理来自数千个微弱星系的光。这些仪器将带来革命性的见解，包括暗能量和暗物质的本质。研究人员代表了天文仪器制造商和专门研究在芯片上操纵光的新型光波电路的工程小组之间的合作。这项技术令人兴奋，因为这种“光子”芯片体积小、重量轻，可以大规模生产，以目前成本的一小部分提供更强大的天文仪器。研究人员提议制造并测试一种性能可调的新型芯片。这使得它非常适合研究成千上万的小星系，最终目的是通过安装在望远镜上的一系列这样的芯片首次揭示它们的暗物质含量。研究人员将把这项工作的主题编织到几个STEM参与工作中，目标是服务不足的社区和从小学到本科生的年龄水平。下一代的光谱设备将需要能够有效地观测10亿个光谱。这比今天的可能性要大得多。唯一可行的途径是利用集成光子技术将每频谱成本降低一个数量级。该项目通过专注于可能实现低阶自适应光学校正的宽视场区域，在高复用、片上光谱仪方面取得了重要进展。研究人员将开发一种新的基于芯片的光谱可调光谱仪，该光谱仪易于批量生产，并提供2D光谱图像，非常适合可扩展的封装。利用UCSC自适应光学实验室先进的天文测试设备，该提案将为近期光子仪器的概念设计提供信息，该仪器成本适中，能够进行强大的矮星系暗物质调查。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。

Future telescope instruments capable of collecting and processing light from thousands of faint galaxies simultaneously are planned. Such instruments would enable transformative insights, including on the nature of dark energy and dark matter. The investigators represent a collaboration between astronomical instrument builders and engineering groups specializing in new lightwave circuits that manipulate light on a chip. This technology is exciting because such “photonic” chips are small and light-weight and can be mass-produced to provide more powerful astronomical instruments at a fraction of their current cost. The investigators propose to build and test a novel chip whose performance can be tuned. This makes it ideally suited to studying thousands of small galaxies, with the eventual aim of revealing their dark matter content for the first time using an array of such chips mounted on a telescope. The investigators will weave the themes of this work into several STEM engagement efforts targeting underserved communities and age levels from elementary school to undergraduates.The next-generation of spectroscopic facilities will need to be capable of observing 1 billion spectra efficiently. This is many factors greater than what is possible today. The only viable path is an order-of-magnitude reduction in the cost-per-spectrum afforded by utilizing integrated photonic technologies. This project makes important strides towards high-multiplex, on-chip spectrometers by focusing on the wide-field regime where low-order adaptive optics corrections are possible. The investigators will develop a new spectrally-tunable chip-based spectrometer that is easily mass-produced and delivers 2D spectral images well suited to scalable packaging. Taking advantage of advanced astronomical testing facilities at UCSC’s Lab for Adaptive Optics, this proposal will inform the conceptual design of a near-term photonic instrument with modest cost capable of conducting a powerful dwarf galaxy dark matter survey.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.