Tip-tilt requirements for coupling starlight into single-mode photonic crystal fibres using a lenslet: A first analysis

Single-mode fibres do not suffer from modal noise and are available in polarisation maintaining form. Single-mode photonic crystal fibres (smPCF) have a wavelength insensitive mode field allowing coupling of the telescope exit pupil into the fibre using a lenslet with a flat spectral response. This may allow single-mode Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS) and fibre fed integral field spectro-polarimetry. Initial results from a theoretical analysis of telescope/smPCF coupling using a lenslet are presented. Coherent imaging theory is used to determine the coupling efficiency into the fibre and thence the fibre numerical aperture is defined and used to compute the sample size on the sky. A higher degree of tip-tilt correction is shown to be required for coupling into single-mode fibres with a lenslet than the multimode fibre alternative, for sparse sampling integral field and multi-object spectroscopy and interferometry, but the magnitude of which is within the scope of current NIR and planned (extreme) VIS AO systems. Extension of the model to contiguous integral field spectroscopy is also considered.