Performance of astronomical beam combiner prototypes fabricated by hybrid sol-gel technology.

Integrated optics coaxial two, three and four telescope beam combiners have been fabricated by hybrid sol-gel technology for astronomical applications. Temporal and spectral analyses of the output interferometric signal have been performed, and their results are in mutual good agreement. The results of the characterization method employed are cross-checked using contrast measurements obtained independently, demonstrating that the chromatic differential dispersion is the main contributer to contrast reduction. The mean visibility of the fabricated devices is always higher than 95 %, obtained using a source with spectral bandwidth of 50 nm. These results show the capability of hybrid sol-gel technology for fast prototyping of complex chip designs used in astronomical applications.

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