An integrated field unit with thousands of optical fibers for a solar telescope

A fiber IFU with 8064 fibers is designed and manufactured for the Fiber Arrayed Solar Optical Telescope. 8064 fibers are divided to two 2D arrays for different polarization states and 12 pseudo fiber slits for 12 spectrometers. There are many relative techniques have been developed during this process. The hexagon microlens array fits the 100% filling factor. The quartz micropores plate guarantee the positioning accuracy among different temperatures. The 18m fiber cables with special designs transfer the signal with low focal ratio degradation. The quartz V-grooves are used to control the positions of the fibers to form those pseudo slits. Besides, a six-dimensional alignment system and a fast alignment and detection system are built to align the microlens array with micropores and measure the focal ratio, transmission efficiency and alignment accuracy of the IFU, respectively.