Direct detection of Earth-like exoplanets requires a high-contrast imaging system to suppress bright stellar light that prevents the detection. The wavefront sensing and control technique which is one component of the high-contrast imaging system can suppress stellar scattered light (speckles) caused by wavefront aberrations. However, deformation of the system due to temperature changes in space telescopes or atmospheric turbulence in ground-based telescopes cause speckles that fluctuate faster than the wavefront sensing and control. As the post-processing technique, the Coherent Differential Imaging on Speckle Area Nulling (CDI-SAN) method was proposed to suppress the fast-fluctuating speckles. We are conducting the laboratory demonstration of the CDISAN method using two types of experimental facilities. One of them is equipped with a deformable mirror and a field programmable gate array. In our initial laboratory demonstration, we achieved 10−8 level contrast. To achieve higher contrast, we are updating our facility. The other facility is equipped with a spatial light modulator (SLM). In this facility, the contrast was improved by 10−1 using the CDI-SAN method.
High-contrast coronagraphs have been developed to detect and characterize exo-planets with contrasts of 10-8~10-10. One method used for coronagraphs is the vector vortex phase mask, and a 6th-order one is required to sufficiently suppress the light from stars with finite apparent diameters using future large telescopes at the ground and in space. We manufactured 12- and 24-segmented sixth-order vector vortex phase masks with photonic crystal waveplates, and their fast axis orientations are 90 degrees and 45 degrees in adjacent regions, respectively. A three-layer structure was designed to cover a broad band of 600-1000nm. The design contrast for the phase mask alone is 8e-6, and we expect to achieve the final contrast by polarization filtering. We found that the retardation of the phase mask was almost coincident to the design curve. As for the 24-segment phase mask, a shaped pupil was designed as a combined element to exhibit the performance of the phase mask in the pupil shape of the TMT, which has the obstructions of the secondary mirror, the spiders, and the segment boundaries. The shaped pupil design has a transmittance of about 70% and a contrast of 10-7 within the outer working angle of 10 lambda/D. A shaped pupil was manufactured by chromium etching on a quartz substrate, and we observed the reduction of the diffracted light within 8 lambda/D.
An exoplanet survey with a near-infrared Doppler (IRD) instrument focused on mid-to-late M-type dwarfs began in February 2019 within the framework of the Subaru Strategic Program. Because mid-to-late M-type dwarfs are brighter in the infrared region than in the visible region, a laser frequency comb (LFC) system was developed as a wavelength reference, covering the near-infrared region from 970 to 1750 nm. To stabilize the comb image on the spectrometer, the original 12.5 GHz comb generated using highly nonlinear fibers was injected into the spectrometer after optical processing, including spectral shaping, depolarization, and mode scrambling. An inline fiber module was introduced to enable any optical system configuration for the optical processor. This fiber-optic configuration in the LFC system allows for long-term stability and easy repair. Moreover, simple remote control of the LFC system using an interactive program enabled LFC generation in approximately 5 min, excluding warm-up time. The observations using the IRD instrument over 4 years have proven that our LFC system is practical and stable. The LFC system operated stably without major problems during this period, helping to maintain a high radial velocity accuracy.
Various types of high-contrast imaging instruments have been proposed and developed for direct detection of exoplanets by suppressing nearby stellar light. Stellar speckles due to wavefront aberration can be suppressed by the appropriate wavefront control, called the dark hole control. However, the speckles, which fluctuate faster than the dark hole control due to atmospheric turbulence in ground-based telescopes or instrument deformation caused by temperature changes in space telescopes, cannot be suppressed by the control and remain in focal plane images. The Coherent Differential Imaging on Speckle Area Nulling (CDI-SAN) method was proposed to overcome such fast fluctuating speckles and detect exoplanetary light. We constructed an optical setup in a laboratory to demonstrate the CDI-SAN method. With the dark hole control and the CDI-SAN method, we achieved 10−8 level of contrasts.
Application of laser displacement measurement is expected in various fields such as manufacturing, medical care, and inter-vehicle distance measurement. In this paper, we demonstrate real-time shape measurement using a laser displacement measurement system based on intensity correlation with phase modulation signals, which we have been studying for years. The intensity-correlation-based laser displacement measurement system measures the intensity correlation between the probe light signal and the phase-modulated electrical reference signal by using an optical modulator. The displacement of an object is measured in real time from a simple calculation using the fundamental and second harmonic frequency components of the intensity correlation signal. The measurement range can be freely adjusted by the modulation frequency applied to the probe and local light. In the previous study, we also developed a method to extend the measurement range without deteriorating the measurement accuracy. Furthermore, the proposed system does not need sophisticated highfrequency circuits, because multiplication operation necessary for intensity correlation measurement is performed optically by using an optical modulator. In this study, we have developed an experimental setup for scanning the probe laser beam on the sample and combined it with the laser displacement measurement system. In the experiment, we used a sample with a stepwise profile composed of aluminum mirrors and successfully measured the shape of flat surfaces and steps within an error range of the order of 10-5 m.
We have developed a fiber optic curvature sensor based on a multicore fiber Bragg grating (MCFBG) and an optical signal intensity correlation processing that uses two-photon absorption (TPA) process in a silicon avalanche photodiode (Si-APD). The developed sensor can use a relatively low cost MCFBG in which all the inscribed gratings have basically the same Bragg wavelength. The overlapped reflection spectra of the gratings are simultaneously obtained and discriminated by using intensity correlation measurement based on TPA photocurrent from a single Si-APD without using optical switches or multiple photodetectors. Our MCFBG curvature sensor can be applied to medical use such as bending, force, or shape sensors for a medical catheter and body plethysmography.
A near-infrared radial velocity (RV) survey focusing on the late-M dwarfs started in February 2019 within the framework of the Subaru Strategy Program (SSP). The InfraRed Doppler (IRD) instrument mainly consists of a highresolution spectrometer and a laser frequency comb (LFC) system as a wavelength reference. Late-M dwarfs emit most of their energy in the near-infrared rather than in the visible. Therefore, to cover the bright absorption lines of M dwarfs, LFC provides a broadband spectrum from 970 nm to 1750 nm with a mode spacing of 12.5 GHz. It has advantages such as simple and robust frequency stabilization, an all-fiber optic configuration, and being observer friendly. The original comb spectrum just generated from highly nonlinear fibers undergoes optical processing such as spectral shaping, depolarization, and mode scrambling in multimode fiber utilization before it is input to the spectrometer. Using the IRD instrument, the IRD-SSP has made more than 100 nights of observations over the last three years. The LFC system operated stably without major trouble during this period, helping to maintain high RV accuracy. Despite the lack of direct maintenance for two and a half years due to Covid-19, the system has continued to operate without any interruption to the observations.
We experimentally demonstrate a fiber optic distributed strain sensor based on slope assisted Brillouin optical time domain analysis (SA-BOTDA) using virtual Brillouin gain spectrum (BGS) generated by multi-frequency light. Generally, strain along an optical fiber can be measured by using Brillouin scattering, because BGS has a linear dependence on the fiber strain. While conventional Brillouin fiber optic strain sensors sweep the probe light frequency to measure the BGS, it limits the measurement time and requires precise control of probe frequency. In contrast, the recently proposed method of SA-BOTDA measures the strain in real time from the power change of fixed frequency probe light that has been amplified by Brillouin amplification. However, because the conventional SA-BOTDA has a nonlinear response to the strain, it has to compensate the nonlinearity or only use BGS with relatively narrow range of linear slope region. In the last study, we proposed virtual BGS that has a relatively wide linear slope region and confirmed the principle. In this paper, we experimentally generate virtual BGS that has more than 100 MHz of linearslope region by using 12-GHz spacing five-frequency pump and probe. The strain distribution along the fiber is successfully measured in real time.
We propose temperature independent fiber bending sensor for catheters, which uses a multicore fiber with a Bragg grating inscribed in each core and spectral measurement technique based on intensity correlation of optical signals based on two-photon absorption process in a silicon avalanche photodiode. Although fiber Bragg gratings are generally sensitive to temperature change, the effect can be suppressed by processing the spectral data of reflected light from all the Bragg gratings, which was confirmed by the proof-of-concept experiment, where we successfully measured the same curvature for different temperature of 20, 25, 30, 35 and 40 degrees Celsius.
Distance measurement using two-photon absorption (TPA) process in a Si-avalanche photodiode (Si-APD) can provide a wide measurement range and high precision. The principle is based on a characteristic of TPA photocurrent that is proportional to the mean square of the optical intensity. Thanks to this square characteristic, the intensity correlation between the probe and reference lights sinusoidally modulated at the same frequency is obtained without using a complicated electrical circuit, and then the distance to the target is measured. The TPA-based distance measurement can also be applied to a multi-point fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor and a multicore FBG curvature sensor, where multiple FBGs with the same reflection spectrum is discriminated from the distance to each FBG. In these applications, FBGs with low reflectance should be used to suppress the interference noise due to multiple reflection between the FBGs. However, it also weakens the reflected light from the FBG and deteriorates the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the detected signal. This problem cannot be solved by simply increasing the probe and pump power, because it can damage the optical components. In this study, we propose using pulsed reference light with a high peak power and synchronously sampling the signal with the pulsed light. The principle is confirmed by a distance measurement of a 5-km-long optical fiber.
A method for measurement range extension without deteriorating the accuracy is proposed on real-time laser displacement measurement based on intensity correlation with phase-modulated signal that we have been investigating for years. The proposed method uses the phase sign of the fundamental and second harmonic frequency components of the detected signal, where these components are expressed by sinusoidal and cosinusoidal functions. In principle, any displacement is measured from the combination of the amplitudes and phase signs of the detected signal components. We performed proof-of-concept experiments of displacement measurement by using a precision motorized stage and successfully confirmed the principle.
Brillouin fiber optic sensing has been attracting much attention as one of the best ways of monitoring the temperature and/or strain distribution of large structures, such as bridges or pipelines. To detect abnormal sections of such structures at an earlier stage, improvement of measurement sensitivity is required. In the standard Brillouin fiber optic sensing, sensitivity given by the temperature or strain coefficient of Brillouin frequency shift (BFS) is about 1 MHz/℃ or 0.05 MHz/με, respectively. In this study, we introduce a new method utilizing two-frequency pump and probe light to enlarge these coefficients without using special fibers. In this method, Brillouin gain spectrum is measured by sweeping the two frequencies of probe light in the opposite directions, where the measured spectrum has two peaks. The separation between the two peaks linearly changes with BFS, and so it has a linear relation to temperature and strain of an optical fiber. Since the changing rate of the separation between the two peaks is twice as large as that of BFS, the temperature or strain sensitivity is doubled to 2 MHz/℃ or 0.1 MHz/με. The enhanced sensitivity was experimentally confirmed in the proof-of-concept experiment.
We experimentally investigated the intercore crosstalk of a multicore fiber (MCF) with Bragg grating inscribed in each core. The purpose is to clarify the effect on the three-dimensional curvature measurement based on a multicore fiber Bragg grating (FBG) and two-photon absorption process in a Si-APD that we have been investigating. The experiment was performed by injecting laser light only in the center core of the MCF and measuring the reflected light from the FBGs in the side cores for the cases that the grating section of the fiber is straight or bent. This measurement was also performed for different wavelength. The measurement results confirmed that the crosstalk was small enough to affect the accuracy of the curvature measurement. We also performed curvature sensing based on the proposed method.
We demonstrate a fiber optic dynamic displacement sensing system based on an unbalanced Michelson interferometer. In this system, the phase of the reference light is modulated with triangle and stepwise waveforms. The high-frequency triangle phase modulation makes the interferometer produce a series of chevron-shaped signals. From the change in temporal width of each signal, displacement of an object is measured with high time resolution. The effect of environmentally induced instability enhanced by a relatively large path length difference is suppressed by changing the phase by the step-wise modulation. A 10-kHz vibration displacement, which had not been measured without the step-wise phase modulation, was successfully measured by using a fiber optic Michelson interferometer even with a path length difference of 1 m.
The Infrared Doppler (IRD) instrument is a fiber-fed high-resolution NIR spectrometer for the Subaru telescope covering the Y,J,H-bands simultaneously with a maximum spectral resolution of 70,000. The main purpose of IRD is a search for Earth-mass planets around nearby M-dwarfs by precise radial velocity measurements, as well as a spectroscopic characterization of exoplanet atmospheres. We report the current status of the instrument, which is undergoing commissioning at the Subaru Telescope, and the first light observation successfully done in August 2017. The general description of the instrument will be given including spectrometer optics, fiber injection system, cryogenic system, scrambler, and laser frequency comb. A large strategic survey mainly focused on late-type M-dwarfs is planned to start from 2019.
The InfraRed Doppler (IRD) instrument is a high-dispersion spectrograph that is available on Subaru Telescope to explore extrasolar planets via infrared radial velocity (RV) observations. The Subaru/IRD is especially useful in the search of a low-mass planet around cool M-type dwarfs for which infrared RV observations are essential. We report our early performance tests for IRD. IRD’s two H2RG detectors have been evaluated with our detector readout technique, ensuring that their readout noise is made sufficiently smaller than the stellar photon noise expected in our planned survey. We have also tested the instrumental stability of RV measurements from the laboratory data obtained with the IRD’s calibration systems including a laser frequency comb (LFC). Among our tested three types of velocity stability, the stability of comb spectra obtained with a multi-mode fiber (MMF) relative to that with another MMF is measured to be ∼1 m s−1. We also infer from these tests that stellar RV measurements with an MMF can be calibrated with a short-term stability of 2 m s−1 or better by the simultaneously-observed reference spectra of LFC. Furthermore, we report preliminary on-sky RV measurements calibrated with a Thorium-Argon hollow-cathode lamp for RV-stable stars (τ Ceti and Barnard's star) and a planet-host (51 Pegasi). These preliminary RV measurements help the further performance test of IRD that will be performed by the on-sky observations with LFC.
We propose a system for precise measurement of multi-point displacement and strain using fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors along with intensity-modulated light and two-photon absorption process in a Si-avalanche photodiode (Si-APD). This method sweeps both the optical wavelength and the phase difference between the two modulation signals. The FBGs’ reflection spectra and their change due to strain are successfully observed at the same time with the precision measurement of the FBG’s displacement, where the relative measurement uncertainty is 10-4. This fiber sensing system is especially suitable for structural health monitoring.
We are studying a coronagraph system with an imperfect pre-coronagraph in the field of direct detection of exoplanets which can provide additional contrast to a main coronagraph. It is a kind of an unbalanced nulling interferometer (UNI) concept which consists of the first deformable mirror (DM), the pre-coronagraph, the second DM, and a main coronagraph. The pre-coronagraph and the DM1 reduce the star light and the speckle noise to about one-hundreds which would be added to the main coronagraph contrast. The DMs can be controlled by the dark-hole algorithm by changing the masks at the coronagraph foci.
In order to detect Earth-like planets around nearby red dwarfs (in particular late-M stars), it is crucial to conduct precise radial velocity measurements at near-infrared wavelengths where these stars emit most of the light. We have been developing the Infrared Doppler (IRD) spectrograph which is a high dispersion spectrograph for the Subaru telescope. To achieve 1m/s RV measurement precision, we have developed a direct generation of laser frequency comb (LFC) that uses high-repetition-rate pump pulse synthesized by a line-by-line pulse-shaping technique. Our LFC generator has some advantages including simple and easy frequency stabilization, all fiber-optic configuration, and broadband calibration by the precise frequency shift of all modes in the LFC. We have successfully generated a 12.5-GHz-spaced comb spanning over 700 nm from 1040 to 1750 nm. The frequency stability was measured by optically heterodyning the comb with an acetylene-stabilized laser at 1542 nm as a reference light. The LFC showed a frequency stability of less than 0.2 MHz and an almost constant spectrum profile for 6 days. The original LFC that has just produced from highly nonlinear fibers needs some optical processing including spectrum shaping, depolarization, and a mode scramble in a multi-mode fiber before it is input into a spectrograph for the calibration. We have investigated the optical processing of the LFC which is necessary for the precise spectrograph calibration. Keywords: laser frequency comb, infrared, spectrograph, Doppler shift
A stellar coronagraph system for direct observations of extra solar planets is under development by combining unbalanced nulling interferometer (UNI), adaptive optics, and a focal plane mask coronagraph1,2,3,4,5,6. It can reach a high contrast as using λ/10000 precision optics by λ/1000 quality ones. However, a sufficient high contrast is not obtained yet in the experiment before. It is thought that the remained speckle noise at the final coronagraph focal plane detector are produced by a “non-common path error” of λ/100 level, which is a wavefront error of the coronagraph different from that of a wavefront sensor (WFS) of adaptive optics, even when the WFS indicates λ/1000 conversion. The non-common path error can be removed by the dark zone method that is the way of wavefront correction by wavefront sensing at the final focal plane detector, although it has an issue of operation for very faint targets because of a slow feedback loop. In the present paper, we describe that our coronagraph system becomes practically higher contrast by upgrading the control method of deformable mirror (DM) with the WFS assisted by final focal plane wavefront sensing method. We accomplished contrast of 8×10-7 relative to the star in experiment.
We have studied a coronagraph system with an unbalanced nulling interferometer (UNI). An important characteristic is a pre-reduction of the star light to 1/100 at the UNI stage which enables to enhance the final contrast. In other point of view, the UNI stage magnifies the wavefront aberrations, which lead us to compensate for the wavefront aberrations beyond the AO systems capabilities. It consists of the UNI, adaptive optics, and a coronagraph. In our experiments, we have observed the extra speckle reduction of better than 0.07 by the advantage of the UNI system. In order to obtain better contrast, we planned to reconstruct all of the optics, which use UNI with 4QPM, a coronagraph with 8OPM or VVM, a dual feedback control method, and a wavefront correction inside the UNI by an upstream AO.
We report the current status of the Infrared Doppler (IRD) instrument for the Subaru telescope, which aims at detecting
Earth-like planets around nearby M darwfs via the radial velocity (RV) measurements. IRD is a fiber-fed, near infrared
spectrometer which enables us to obtain high-resolution spectrum (R~70000) from 0.97 to 1.75 μm. We have been
developing new technologies to achieve 1m/s RV measurement precision, including an original laser frequency comb as
an extremely stable wavelength standard in the near infrared. To achieve ultimate thermal stability, very low thermal
expansion ceramic is used for most of the optical components including the optical bench.
A wide-area sensor network based on fiber optic power supply is reviewed. This sensor network is composed of
hundreds of sensor nodes driven by the laser power. Each sensor node produces optical signals by modulating a part of
the supplied laser light and sends these signals to a monitoring station. The optical power required for driving one sensor
node is less than 2 mW. Because each sensor node can control two or three sensors, a single laser diode with 1 W is
sufficient for driving 1,000 sensors. The proposed sensor network can also be integrated with wireless sensors, which
enables ubiquitous sensing.
One of the problems for direct observation of extrasolar planets is the speckle noise due to a wave-front error.
Therefore, high-accuracy adaptive optics is required for realizing a wavefront quality of λ/10000 rms. An unbalanced
nulling interferometer has a possibility to assist high-accuracy correction. In this paper, we propose the interferometer
with a four-quadrant phase mask in which an optical path is common. By using the mask, we succeed in stabilizing the
interference and taking measurements of wavefront errors with 10-times higher sensitivity. In this way, we expect to
construct high-accuracy adaptive optics which is more stable.
A high-speed optical millimeter wave scanner has been developed and introduced into the distance
displacement measurement based on two-photon absorption (TPA) process in a Si-APD. The TPA-based
distance displacement measurement can measure the displacement of an object at 10 mm to 10 km away in
principle. The measurement for the long distance of 10 m to 10 km was already realized by using intensity
modulated light with a modulation frequency range of 10 GHz in the last study. The high-speed optical
millimeter wave scanner developed in this study scanned over 100 GHz in 10 ms at its highest speed. We have
successfully measured the short distance of 10 mm with a data acquisition time of 1 s and an accuracy of
6.34×10-3 .
We demonstrate a wide-area fiber sensor network composed of sensor nodes driven by the power of transmitted
laser light. The sensor node produces optical signals by modulating a part of the laser light and sends it back to
the monitor. The developed sensor node was driven with an input optical power of 1.7 mW. The number of the
sensor nodes is also discussed theoretically. It is clarified that more than 1,000 sensor nodes can be placed along
an optical fiber line by using a high-power laser diode of 1 W.
For the next-generation ultra-high-speed TDM optical communication systems, we are developing a waveguide type
digital optical pulse synthesizer based on the time-to-space conversion. Our digital optical synthesizer can produce
arbitrary optical packets with high bit rate in the order of 100 Gbps and chirp-free pulses. In the early prototype, the
signal for controlling the phase and the amplitude of optical signal was manually adjusted with trial and error. Recently,
we have introduced a feedback system to this synthesizer for automatic generation of controlling signal, which makes it
extremely easier to produce optical signal with arbitrary shape. In this paper, we demonstrate experimental generation of
Fourier-transform limited optical pulses and arbitrary 8-bit RZ pulse packets with a bit rate of 100 Gbps.
This paper demonstrates a novel fiber optic remote sensing system based on laser powering and a liquid-crystal optical modulator that transforms electrical signal of sensors into optical with low power consumption. A basic experiment for confirming the principle was conducted using a standard communication-grade semiconductor laser with the output of less than 20 mW both for laser powering and for sensor signal transmission. The sensor signal was transferred through 5-km-long optical fiber and detected with On/Off ratio of more than 15 dB.
3D common-path interferometer is proposed to obtain achromatic nulling for star coronagraphy. Common-path scheme compensates optical path difference (OPD) effectively and is stable to mechanical vibrations. 3D ray geometry involves polarization rotations ±90° in each interferometer arm and results in achromatic 180° phase shift for destructive interference for on-axial source. The interferometer throughput is obtained at nearly 100% for entire polarized light and nearly 50/50 ratio of light energy is split between Bright and Nulled ports for off-axial source. Theory, simulations and preliminary breadboard experiments are shown in reasonable agreement.
Though silicon photodetectors are usually insensitive to near infrared light of the wavelength longer than 1100 nm, they become sensitive to it with high intensity, producing photocurrent in proportion to the square of the intensity. This is due to two-photon absorption (TPA) process. So far, the TPA process in silicon photodetectors has mainly been applied to measuring the waveform of optical short pulses, since it can give the intensity correlation of incident light signals. In this paper, as a new application of the TPA process in photodetectors, we propose a novel profilometry based on Michelson interferometer with optical microwave as a light source and avalanche photodiode as a two-photon absorber. In contrast to the classical heterodyne profilometer that measures the optical path length difference from the phase of the modulated optical signal, the dynamic range of the TPA method is not limited by the bandwidth of a photodetector and attached electronic devices. The TPA method can realize the dynamic range of several millimeters to several ten meters with simple setup. The principle of the TPA based profilometry is experimentally demonstrated using fiber optic Michelson interferometer.
A fiber Brillouin ring laser free from polarization fluctuation induced instability is experimentally demonstrated. Stable lasing characteristics having already been analyzed by our group are confirmed. This laser is especially applicable for Brillouin fiber optic gyros.
A fiber Brillouin ring laser gyro composed of single-polarization single-mode fiber is analyzed. The eigenstate of polarization both for the pump light and the stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in the fiber ring-resonator is strictly considered. It is clarified that this structure ensures stable and efficient pump, which makes possible stable lasing of the SBS with low threshold. The relation between the temperature and the behavior of the SBS lasing is also discussed.
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