Sampling of the telescope image plane using single- and few-mode fibre arrays.

The coupling efficiency of starlight into single and few-mode fibres fed with lenslet arrays to provide a continuous field of view is investigated. The single-mode field of view (FOV) and overall transmission is a highly complicated function of wavelength and fibre size leading to a continuous sample only in cases of poor throughput. Significant improvements are found in the few-mode regime with a continuous and efficient sample of the image plane shown to be possible with as few as 4 modes. This work is of direct relevance to the coupling of celestial light into photonic instrumentation and the removal of image scrambling and reduction of focal ratio degradation (FRD) using multi-mode fibre to single-mode fibre array converters.