PAWS and POCO: NIR Astrophotonic Instruments for Astronomy

For near-infrared ground and space-based astronomy, compact photonic devices can replace the large bulk optical components in spectrographs, frequency combs, beam combiners, sky subtraction filters, thus saving cost, reducing volume, weight, power requirements. Photonic integrated circuits (PICs), analogous to (IC) electronics, are particularly powerful address innovative miniaturized solutions. Here, we demonstrate two new instrument prototypes: Potsdam Arrayed Waveguide Spectrograph (PAWS) built around an array waveguide grating (AWG) PIC Hawaii2RG detector, Comb (POCO), a comb generated by nonlinear processes micro-ring resonator chip. PAWS is calibrated remotely located POCO via fiber optic communication network of Leibniz-Institute for Astrophysics (AIP). The vision future astrophotonic solutions instrumentation pointing toward hybrid detector arrays that hold promise dramatically change layout telescope focal plane instrumentation.