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EP: Fachverband Extraterrestrische Physik
EP 3: Astrophysics III
EP 3.3: Vortrag
Dienstag, 17. März 2026, 11:30–11:45, KH 01.019
An in-depth characterization of fiber-to-chip coupling interfaces in arrayed waveguide spectrographs for astronomy — •Tim Schleifer1,2, Aashia Rahman2, Kalaga Madhav2, Michael Gensch1,3, and Andreas Stoll2 — 1Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany — 2Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany — 3DLR Institute of Space Research, Berlin, Germany
Astrophotonics offers a pathway toward miniaturized and highly stable astronomical instruments for next-generation telescopes. A chip-based arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) acts as the main dispersive element in an astrophotonic spectrograph, with a key limitation arising at the fiber-to-chip interface, where coupling losses can critically impact overall throughput. Characterizing and optimizing this interface is essential to ensuring efficient light transfer. This work focuses on the development of a warm astrophotonic spectrograph based on an AWG with a 16-fiber input array coupled to the AWG chip. A silica-on-silicon AWG chip with 15 input waveguides and a diced output facet was used. The resulting echellogram was recorded using a C-RED 2, an infrared camera used in astronomy. A detailed characterization of fiber-to-chip coupling that includes theoretical models, simulations, and experimental measurements was done for a single fiber coupled to an input waveguide of the AWG. Subsequently, all 16 input waveguides were individually assessed to evaluate performance variations across the array. Future work includes a characterization of throughput and spectral resolution followed by an on-sky test to demonstrate the feasibility of a multi-fiber astrophotonic spectrograph.
Keywords: Astrophotonics; Fiber-to-chip coupling; Arrayed waveguide grating; Astrophotonic spectrograph