Overview

We seek to develop the first miniature passive near-IR imaging spectrometer built entirely from small-scale integrated photonic devices. This microwave oven-sized instrument will open up the very distant universe to terrestrial-based instruments and eliminate the size and cost barriers brought about by extremely large telescopes (ELTs). During the 1990s, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and two Keck 10-meter telescopes revolutionized our understanding of the Universe with their ability to see fine details from space (HST) and study faint light sources using telescopes with large collecting areas (Keck). Astronomers are now building a generation of extremely large telescopes (D=25-42m) that will operate at the diffraction limit, attempting to achieve an angular resolution now only feasible in space. Because the size of telescope instruments is roughly proportional to the volume of the telescope, astronomers are facing ELT instruments the size of houses (100 m³), costing more than $50 million, and with development times exceeding seven years. An instrument, however, that uses photonic technology will break this trend of spiraling costs. Traditional instruments have difficulty conserving the integrity of a tiny diffraction-limited image as it passes through a succession of large lenses, mirrors, and gratings. This project's approach is to build a low-cost high-performance instrument that couples the telescope's diffraction-limited beam directly to an optical-fiber-fed integrated photonic instrument. The instrument will filter unwanted spectral lines from the atmosphere, and disperse the astronomical spectrum onto a highly sensitive HgCdTe infrared detector. We will use this instrument to provide the deepest views of the Universe from an earth-based telescope revealing its most distant and youngest galaxies.
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