Coupling light into optical fibres near the diffraction limit

The burgeoning field of astrophotonics explores the interface between astronomy and photonics. Important applications include photonic OH suppression at near-infrared wavelengths, and integrated photonic spectroscopy. These new photonic mechanisms are not well matched to conventional multi-mode fibres and are best fed with single or few-mode fibres. We envisage the largest gains in astrophotonics will come from instruments that operate with single or few-mode fibres in the diffraction limited or near diffraction limited regimes. While astronomical instruments have largely solved the problem of coupling light into multi-mode fibres this is largely unexplored territory for few-mode and single-mode fibres. Here we describe a project to explore this topic in detail, and present initial results on coupling light into single and few-mode fibres at the diffraction limit. We find that fibres with as few as ~5 guided modes have qualitatively different behaviour to single-mode fibres and share a number of the beneficial characteristics of multi-mode fibres.