A Fiber Coupling Plug for Multi-Object Exoplanet Search Spectral Interferometer

Abstract

The increasing number of spectral survey telescopes that are soon commissioned for exploring the universe will confront us with many new challenges on the use of optical fibers. A fiber-switching problem for telescope's terminal instrument is as important as a well-known problem of positioning fibers on telescope's focal plane. For a modern survey telescope, it generally feeds several terminal instruments with different functions. According to the observation, these instruments are seriously in need of switching fiber-link with telescope as soon as possible. A kind of multi-fiber coupling plugs introduced in this paper will work for switching fiber-link between Multi-object Exoplanet Search Spectral Interferometer (MESSI) and low resolution spectrograph at Guoshoujing telescope (LAMOST). It includes an inserter, a receptor and a socket in general. The number of simultaneously coupling fibers is up to 25 per group, and any broken fiber in a single plug can be replaced by a new standard one soon without wasting entire fiber bundle. In addition, Most of mechanical part can also be individually replaced when a normal loss happens after a long working time. The related test result is given in detail, including the machining precision and coupling efficiency.