arXiv subjects

C. Schwab

Publications and source records attributed to C. Schwab.

22 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

Demonstration of an efficient, photonic-based astronomical spectrograph on an 8-m telescope

We demonstrate for the first time an efficient, photonic-based astronomical spectrograph on the 8-m Subaru Telescope. An extreme adaptive optics system is combined with pupil apodiziation optics to efficiently inject light directly into a single-mode fiber, which feeds a compact cross-dispersed spectrograph based on array waveguide grating technology. The instrument currently offers a throughput of 5% from sky-to-detector which we outline could easily be upgraded to ~13% (assuming a coupling efficiency of 50%). The isolated spectrograph throughput from the single-mode fiber to detector was 42% at 1550 nm. The coupling efficiency into the single-mode fiber was limited by the achievable Strehl ratio on a given night. A coupling efficiency of 47% has been achieved with ~60% Strehl ratio on-sky to date. Improvements to the adaptive optics system will enable 90% Strehl ratio and a coupling of up to 67% eventually. This work demonstrates that the unique combination of advanced technologies enables the realization of a compact and highly efficient spectrograph, setting a precedent for future instrument design on very-large and extremely-large telescopes.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2017

Modal noise in an integrated photonic lantern fed diffraction-limited spectrograph

In an attempt to develop a streamlined astrophotonic instrument, we demonstrate the realization of an all-photonic device capable of both multimode to single mode conversion and spectral dispersion on an 8-m class telescope with efficient coupling. The device was a monolithic photonic spectrograph which combined an integrated photonic lantern, and an efficient arrayed waveguide grating device. During on-sky testing, we discovered a previously unreported type of noise that made spectral extraction and calibration extremely difficult. The source of the noise was traced to a wavelength-dependent loss mechanism between the feed fiber's multimode near-field pattern, and the modal acceptance profile of the integrated photonic lantern. Extensive modeling of the photonic components replicates the wavelength-dependent loss, and demonstrates an identical effect on the final spectral output. We outline that this could be mitigated by directly injecting into the integrated photonic lantern.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2016

A High Resolution Spectrograph for the 72 cm Waltz Telescope at Landessternwarte, Heidelberg

The Waltz Spectrograph is a fiber-fed high-resolution échelle spectrograph for the 72 cm Waltz Telescope at the Landessternwarte, Heidelberg. It uses a 31.6 lines/mm 63.5$^{\circ}$ blaze angle échelle grating in white-pupil configuration, providing a spectral resolving power of $R\sim$65,000 covering the spectral range between 450$-$800\,nm in one CCD exposure. A prism is used for cross-dispersion of échelle orders. The spectrum is focused by a commercial apochromat onto a 2k$\times$2k CCD detector with 13.5$μ$m per pixel. An exposure meter will be used to obtain precise photon-weighted midpoints of observations, which will be used in the computation of the barycentric corrections of measured radial velocities. A stabilized, newly designed iodine cell is employed for measuring radial velocities with high precision. Our goal is to reach a radial velocity precision of better than 5 m/s, providing an instrument with sufficient precision and sensitivity for the discovery of giant exoplanets. Here we describe the design of the Waltz spectrograph and early on-sky results.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2016

Adaptive Anisotropic Petrov-Galerkin Methods for First Order Transport Equations

This paper builds on recent developments of adaptive methods for linear transport equations based on certain stable variational formulations of Petrov-Galerkin type. The variational formulations allow us to employ meshes with cells of arbitrary aspect ratios. We develop a refinement scheme generating highly anisotropic partitions that is inspired by shearlet systems. We establish approximation rates for N-term approximations from corresponding piecewise polynomials for certain compact cartoon classes of functions. In contrast to earlier results in a curvelet or shearlet context the cartoon classes are concisely defined through certain characteristic parameters and the dependence of the approximation rates on these parameters is made explicit here. The approximation rate results serve then as a benchmark for subsequent applications to adaptive Galerkin solvers for transport equations. In numerical experiments, the new algorithms track C^2-curved shear layers and discontinuities stably and accurately, and realize essentially optimal rates. Finally, we treat parameter dependent transport problems, which arise in kinetic models as well as in radiative transfer. In heterogeneous media these problems feature propagation of singularities along curved characteristics precluding, in particular, fast marching methods based on ray-tracing. Since now the solutions are functions of spatial variables and parameters one has to address the curse of dimensionality. We show computationally, for a model parametric transport problem in heterogeneous media in 2 + 1 dimension, that sparse tensorization of the presently proposed spatial directionally adaptive scheme with hierarchic collocation in ordinate space based on a stable variational formulation high-dimensional phase space, the curse of dimensionality can be removed when approximating averaged bulk quantities.

math.NA↗