Femtosecond laser writing of 3D polarization insensitive integrated devices for astrophotonics (Conference Presentation)

Astrophotonics is an emerging tool for increasing the angular resolution in ground-based sky observations. Due to the unpolarized nature of celestial light, it is necessary to operate with fully polarization insensitive integrated devices. In this respect, here we show that a thermal annealing after the femtosecond laser writing of waveguides reduces their birefringence of more than order of magnitude, providing integrated circuits whose behaviour is insensitive to the polarization of the input light. As a validation of this technique, we present the successful fabrication of a low-loss integrated device for performing stellar interferometry of up to 8 input beams.