Photonic-integrated interferometric array field-of-view splicing subaperture optical path design

The photonic integrated interferometric imaging system generally adds single-mode fiber arrays at the focal plane of the subaperture and completes the large-field-of-view splicing imaging by receiving beams with different field-of-view angles. However, the direct use of fiber arrays leads to discontinuity of the imaging field-of-view and causes the focal length of the subaperture to lengthen, and the thickness is increased substantially. To address the above problems, we propose a combination of microlens arrays and fiber optic arrays to subdivide the subaperture image plane to achieve a seamless splicing of the field-of-view, and to significantly reduces the overall thickness of the subaperture array through the combination of the telephoto objective lens and the three-lens spatial compression plate. The design results show that by adding 65×65 microlens array in front of the fiber array to focus the beam twice to achieve the system field of view seamless splicing, the field of view is expanded 65 times, the full field of view is 0.0489°, the efficiency of spatial optical coupling in the center of each fiber in the single-mode fiber array is not less than 40% when the visible light is incident, and after adding the spatial compression plate to compress the free-space light path, the overall thickness of the system achieves one order of magnitude compression. This design realizes photonic integrated interference imaging system large field of view seamless splicing imaging at the same time, provides a new way for the solution of the problem of excessive thickness in ultra-long focal length lenses.