Instruments without optics: an integrated photonic spectrograph

In recent years, a great deal of emphasis has been placed on achieving the diffraction limit with large aperture telescopes. For a well matched focal-plane instrument, the diffraction limit provides the highest possible angular resolution and sensitivity per pixel. But it offers another key advantage as we now show. Conventionally, as the telescope aperture D grows, the instrument size grows in proportion to D, and the cost increases as D or faster. However, an instrument that operates at the diffraction limit can break the trend of spiralling costs. In traditional instruments, the light must pass through a succession of large lenses, mirrors and gratings, making it difficult to conserve the integrity of such a small psf. An alternative approach, as we now show, is to couple the diffraction-limited beam directly into an integrated photonic spectrograph operating in low-order modes.