Astrophophotonics: the next wave in observational cosmology

Modern astronomy is on the verge of another revolution. The largest optical/infrared telescopes, with diameters up to 10m, are soon to be overtaken by 25-42m behemoths. These huge light buckets have many professed science goals, but two of the most compelling are the detection of faint light from extrasolar planets in orbit around nearby stars and, at the other extreme, the detection of the first star-forming systems in the early universe which is the primary focus of this talk. The design and construction of the next generation of astronomical instruments presents us with a major challenge. Simply scaling up existing technology leads to highly ineffective and costly instruments that are rarely optimized for the job at hand. The astronomical community must embrace new technological avenues. Astrophotonics lies at the interface of astronomy and photonics. This burgeoning field has emerged over the past decade in response to the increasing demands of astronomical instrumentation. Early successes include: (i) planar waveguides to combine signals from widely spaced telescopes in stellar interferometry; (ii) frequency combs for ultra-high precision spectroscopy to detect planets around nearby stars; (iii) ultra-broadband fibre Bragg gratings to suppress unwanted background; (iv) photonic lanterns that allow single-mode behaviour within a multimode fibre; (v) planar waveguides to miniaturize astronomical spectrographs; (vi) large mode area fibres to generate artificial stars in the upper atmosphere for adaptive optics correction; (vii) liquid crystal polymers in optical vortex coronographs and adaptive optics systems.