PolyOculus: Low-Cost Photonics-Enabled Telescope Arrays

As astronomy moves into the era of large-scale time-domain surveys, we are seeing a flood of new transient and variable sources which will reach biblical proportions with the advent of the Vera Rubin Observatory. A key strategic challenge for astronomy in this era is the lack of suitable spectroscopic followup facilities. In response to this need, we have developed the PolyOculus approach for producing large-area-equivalent telescopes by using photonic technologies to link modules of multiple semiautonomous, small, inexpensive, commercial-off-the-shelf telescopes. Crucially, this scalable design has construction costs which are > 10x lower than equivalent traditional large-area telescopes. In addition, PolyOculus is inherently highly automated and well-suited for remote operations. Development of this technology will enable the expansion of major research efforts in the VRO era to a host of smaller universities and colleges, including primarily-undergraduate institutions, for budgets consistent with their educational expenditures on similar facilities. We present an overview of the PolyOculus approach and its potential scientific applications, particularly for time-domain astronomy and extreme precision radial velocity measurements. We will particularly focus on the photonic lantern technology at the heart of PolyOCulus, presenting key design drivers, current status of lantern development, and other related applications in wavefront sensing and tapered couplers for photonic devices including integrated optics.