PIMMS: photonic integrated multimode microspectrograph

We present the first integrated multimode photonic spectrograph, a device we call PIMMS #1. The device comprises a set of multimode fibres that convert to single-mode propagation using a matching set of photonic lanterns. These feed to a stack of cyclic array waveguides (AWGs) that illuminate a common detector. Such a device greatly reduces the size of an astronomical instrument at a fixed spectroscopic resolution. Remarkably, the PIMMS concept is largely independent of the telescope diameter, input focal ratio and entrance aperture – i.e. one size fits all! The instrument architecture can also exploit recent advances in astrophotonics (e.g. OH suppression fibres).

This instrument is described in an SPIE paper that discusses the advantages and disadvantages of this approach.

We also present a movie of the instrument’s operation . This is a 91 MB avi file. Another version in QuickTime is available here (124 MB).