Journal
OPTICS EXPRESS
Volume 19, Issue 3, Pages 2649-2661Publisher
OPTICAL SOC AMER
DOI: 10.1364/OE.19.002649
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Funding
- Australian Research Council
- Leverhulme Foundation
- Merton College
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We demonstrate a novel imaging fiber bundle (hexabundle) that is suitable for low-light applications in astronomy. The most successful survey instruments at optical-infrared wavelengths use hundreds to thousands of multimode fibers fed to one or more spectrographs. Since most celestial sources are spatially extended on the celestial sphere, a hexabundle provides spectroscopic information at many distinct locations across the source. We discuss two varieties of hexabundles: (i) lightly fused, closely packed, circular cores; (ii) heavily fused non-circular cores with higher fill fractions. In both cases, we find the important result that the cladding can be reduced to similar to 2 mu m over the short fuse length, well below the conventional similar to 10 lambda thickness employed more generally, with a consequent gain in fill factor. Over the coming decade, it is to be expected that fiber-based instruments will be upgraded with hexabundles in order to increase the spatial multiplex capability by two or more orders of magnitude. (C)2011 Optical Society of America
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