Ultrafast laser inscription: an enabling technology for astrophotonics

The application of photonics to astronomy offers major advantages in the area of highly-multiplexed spectroscopy, especially when applied to extremely large telescopes. These include the suppression of the near-infrared night-sky spectrum [J. Bland-Hawthorn et al, Opt. Express 12, 5902 (2004), S. G. Leon-Saval et al, Opt. Lett. 30, 2545 ( 2005)] and the miniaturisation of spectrographs so that they may integrated into the lightpath of individual spatial samples [J. Bland-Hawthorn et al, Proc SPIE 6269, 62690N ( 2006)]. Efficient collection of light from the telescope requires multimode optical fibres and three-dimensional photonic devices. We propose ultrafast laser inscription ( ULI) [R. R. Thomson et al, Opt. Express 15, 11691 ( 2007)] as the best technology to fabricate 3D photonic devices for astrophotonic applications. (C) 2008 Optical Society of America