Low-Mass Planar Photonic Imaging Sensor

Abstract

Continuing on the successful progress of NIAC Phase I, this report summarizes the technical progress achieved under NIAC Phase II during the performance period September 19, 2014-June 18, 2017. During this period, the research team has made the following accomplishments: designed and layout a silica photonic integrated circuit (PIC) as a two baseline interferometric imager; constructed an experiment to utilize the two baselines for complex visibility measurement on a point source and a variable width slit; analyzed and studied the testbed results. (in collaboration with Lockheed Martin); designed and layout Si3N4 PICs for the low-resolution and high-resolution SPIDER telescope; fabricated the multi-layer Si3N4 PIC for low and high resolution SPIDER telescope; characterize the optical throughput and heater response for Si3N4 PIC for low and high resolution SPIDER telescopes; carried out imaging experiments using the Si3N4 PIC low-resolution version (in collaboration with Lockheed Martin); investigated signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio of SPIDER imager compared to the conventional panchromatic imager (in collaboration with Lockheed Martin); fulfilled the SNR simulation upon SPIDER imager (in collaboration with Lockheed Martin).