Integrated Photonic Spectrographs
The size of the optical elements in traditional astronomical spectrographs scales with telescope diameter (unless the telescope is operating at the diffraction limit). For large telescopes, this leads to spectrographs of enormous size and implied cost. The Integrated Photonic Spectrograph (IPS) is a miniature photonic waveguide-based device that offers the potential to break this scaling law and to provide massively multiplexed spectroscopic capabilities for future astronomical telescopes. There are three key advantages offered by the IPS technology:

• modularisation: by breaking the system into low-cost modular components, low-maintenance readily-expandable instruments can be constructed with a large number of elements;
• miniaturisation: very large multiplexing capacity only becomes feasible by significantly reducing the size of each spectrograph element - this is achieved by operating the spectrograph at the diffraction limit;
• mass production: by relying on mature lithographic fabrication techniques developed principally by the telecommunication industry we can ensure that instrument costs are not completely overwhelmed by technology development and demonstration costs.