Research at CUDOS @ MQ

Astrophotonics

The astrophotonics group is focused on the design and development of integrated photonic devices for Earth-like exoplanet hunting. Our research interests range from integrated photonic spectrographs to OH line suppression and many of our devices have already been successfully tested on-sky.



Research Interests


Integrated Photonic Spectrograph (IPS). The IPS reduces the size of a conventional spectrograph by many orders of magnitude and it is one of the main dispersive elements for exoplanet hunting as part of the PANDORA project.

Dragonfly is a new generation of integrated pupil remapper, where the light coming from the telescope is reformatted for nulling interferometry. This ongoing project in the C-band has recently started moving to the midIR, where planet-star contrast improves dramatically.

The Integrated Photonic Lantern provides an efficient interface between multimode "light buckets" fibres and high-fidelity single-mode photonic devices.





Members

  • Prof. Michael Withford
  • Dr Alexander Arriola
  • Dr Simon Gross
  • Izabella Spaleniak
  • Glen Douglas
  • Thomas Gretzinger

Former Members

  • Dr Nemanja Jovanovic
  • Dr Nick Cvetojevic
  • Dionne Haynes
  • Geraldine Marien

Links


Telescopes we have worked at...

Anglo Australian Telescope (Coonabarabran, Australia)Macquarie University Telescopes (Sydney, Australia)Subaru Telescope (Hawaii, USA)

Publications

  1. I. Spaleniak, S. Gross, N. Jovanovic, R. J. Williams, J. S. Lawrence, M. J. Ireland and M. J. Withford, "Multiband processing of multimode light: combining 3D photonic lanterns with waveguide Bragg gratings", Laser & Photon. Rev., Vol. 8(1), pp. L1-L5, 2014.
  2. A. Arriola, S. Gross, N. Jovanovic, N. Charles, P. G. Tuthill, S. M. Olaizola, A. Fuerbach and M. J. Withford, "Low bend loss waveguides enable compact, efficient 3D photonic chips", Opt. Exp., Vol. 21 (3), pp. 2978-2986, 2013.
  3. I. Spaleniak, N. Jovanovic, S. Gross, M. J. Ireland, J. S. Lawrence and M. J. Withford, "Integrated photonic building blocks for next-generation astronomical instrumentation II: the multimode to single mode transition", Opt. Exp., Vol. 21 (22), pp. 27197-27208, 2013.
  4. N. Cvetojevic, N. Jovanovic, J. Lawrence, M. Withford and J. Bland-Hawthorn, "Developing arrayed waveguide grating spectrographs for multi-object astronomical spectroscopy", Opt. Exp., Vol. 20(3), pp. 2062-2072, 2012.
  5. G. Marien, N. Jovanovic, N. Cvetojevic, R. Williams, R. Haynes, J. Lawrence, Q. Parker and M. J. Withford, "Fibre Bragg gratings for high spectral and temporal resolution astronomical observations", J. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 421 (4), pp. 3641-3648, 2012.
  6. N. Jovanovic, I. Spaleniak, S. Gross, M. Ireland, J. S. Lawrence, C. Miese, A. Fuerbach and M. J. Withford, "Integrated photonic building blocks for next generation astronomical instrumentation I: the multimode waveguide", Opt. Exp., Vol. 20 (15), pp. 17029-17043, 2012.
  7. N. Charles, N. Jovanovic, S. Gross, P. Stewart, B. Norris, J. O'Byrne, J. Lawrence, M. Withford and P. Tuthill, "Design of Optically Path Length Matched, Three-Dimensional Photonic Circuits Comprising Uniquely Routed Waveguides", Appl. Opt. Vol 51 (27), pp. 6489-6497, 2012.
  8. N. Jovanovic, P. G. Tuthill, B. Norris, S. Gross, P. Stewart, N. Charles, S. Lacour, M. Ams, J. Lawrence, A. Lehmann, C. Niel, G. D. Marshall, G. Robertson, M. Ireland, A. Fuerbach and M. J. Withford, "Starlight demonstration of the Dragonfly instrument: an integrated photonic pupil-remapping interferometer for high-contrast imaging," Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 427, pp. 806-815, 2012.