Characterization and on-sky testing of photonic, AWG-based astronomical spectrographs
Abstract
Astrophotonics is a field that intends to meet the needs of next-generation instruments at a small footprint, low cost, and high stability, compared to bulk-optics-based alternatives. Much development effort is driven by the stringent requirements of direct detection and characterization of exoplanets. Our team works in characterizing Arrayed-Waveguide Grating (AWG) chips for photonics-based, high-resolution, near infrared spectro-interferometry. AWG spectrographs allow to test the feasibility of photonic spectro-interferometers for exoplanet characterization, another step towards fully photonic instruments for astronomy. We present the current status of our AWG characterization and a preliminary on-sky qualification campaign at the PAPYRUS AO system. We present the CoLiBRIS-AWG spectrograph prototype built for on-sky testing, and preliminary results using our high-resolution (H band, R~18000) AWG for observations of Arcturus (alpha Bo\"otes) and Betelgeuse (alpha Orionis). This work contributes to assessing the capabilities of photonic spectroscopy for the development of future compact instruments.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2607.26954,
title = {Characterization and on-sky testing of photonic, AWG-based astronomical spectrographs},
author = {Jeronimo Calderon-Gomez and Frantz Martinache and Nick Cvetojevic and Marc-Antoine Martinod and Vincent Foriel and Nemanja Jovanovic and Pradip Gatkine and Gregory Sercel and Alexis Carlotti and Marc Ferlet and Matteo Pasinetti and Angelie Alagao and Arnaud Striffling and Guillermo Martin and David Mary and Roxanne Ligi and Sylvie Robbe-Dubois},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.26954},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
11 pages, 9 figures; Proc. SPIE 14148, Optical and Infrared Interferometry and Imaging X, 14148-95