High numerical aperture multimode fibers for prime focus use

Kaiyuan Zhang; Jessica R. Zheng; Will Saunders

doi:10.1117/12.2232131

22 July 2016 High numerical aperture multimode fibers for prime focus use

Kaiyuan Zhang, Jessica R. Zheng, Will Saunders

Proceedings Volume 9912, Advances in Optical and Mechanical Technologies for Telescopes and Instrumentation II; 99125J (2016) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2232131
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2016, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Abstract

Modern telescopes typically have prime focus speeds too fast for direct use with standard numerical aperture (NA=0.22±0.02) silica-cored fibers. Specifically, the current design for the proposed Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) telescope is ~f/2, requiring fibers with NA>0.25. Micro foreoptics can be used to slow the beam, as used on the prime focus spectrograph (PFS) on Subaru, but this adds cost and complexity, and increases losses. An attractive alternative is offered by high NA pure silica-cored fibers, which can be used directly at f/2, and which are now available from multiple vendors. We present throughput and focal ratio degradation measurements on two samples of these high NA fibers. It is found that the measured attenuation losses are comparable with the best available standard NA fibers. The fibers were also tested for focal ratio degradation, and the fiber from CeramOptec was found to have acceptable FRD, representng additional collimator losses ~1%. The near field performance of the high NA fiber is also investigated and these high NA fibers exhibit very good scrambling performance; we saw no evidence for significant output near-field variations for varying input beam angles or position in a 50m fiber.

Citation Download Citation

Kaiyuan Zhang, Jessica R. Zheng, and Will Saunders "High numerical aperture multimode fibers for prime focus use", Proc. SPIE 9912, Advances in Optical and Mechanical Technologies for Telescopes and Instrumentation II, 99125J (22 July 2016); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2232131

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