Two telescopes ABCD electro-optic beam combiner based on lithium niobate for near infrared stellar interferometry

摘要

Lithium Niobate (LN) based electro-optic modulators are well known in the optical communications field, due to their high bandwidth and deep rejection ratio [1]. These performances could be used in the field of astronomy for stellar interferometry in the mid-infrared domain [2]. With our partners from Photline Technologies, we have conceived, developed and characterized a 2T ABCD [3] beam combiner in the near-infrared (1.5μm, the H-band in astrophysics). The modulation scheme, presented below in Figure 1, allows to determine the fringe characteristics in a single shot measurement, without the need to externally scan the optical phase delay. Fine adjustment of the relative phase can be achieved using the electro-optic properties of the lithium niobate waveguides. In particular, the phase on each output can be electrically controlled and locked by using appropriate electrodes. These devices have to ensure modal filtering to reject optical aberrations of the wavefront and thus optimize the fringes contrast, which means that they have to be single mode through all the spectral range of interest. This also means that the couplers should be achromatic and balanced in order to optimize the fringe contrast. We will present results on global transmission, performance of the couplers and the electro-optic behavior of the device using monochromatic as well as wide spectral sources in the H-band.