Astrophotonics – Applications of Photonics in Astronomy

Astrophotonics (the application of photonic principles in astronomy) is rapidly developing field that has emerged over the past decade in response to developments in photonics and the increasing demands of astronomical instrumentation for the current and next generation optical/Infrared telescope facilities. Applications include: (i) frequency combs for ultra-high precision spectroscopy based on non-linear fibres or micro-resonators to, for example, detect planets around nearby stars, (ii) ultra- broadband fibre Bragg gratings or micro-resonators to suppress unwanted background from the night sky; (iii) mode transformations that provide both multimode to multimode transition in fibre tapers, and multimode to single mode transitions in photonic lanterns that facilitate “clean” implementation of photonic function; (iv) planar waveguides devices, based on Arrayed Waveguide Gratings (AWGs), for miniaturize astronomical spectrographs. The Astrophotonics research that will be presented is aimed at developing photonic devices for astronomy within the optical and near- IR wavelength regime (~320-2500nm).