Marina Centenera-Merino, Andrew Ross-Adams, Christopher Betters, Pedro J Amado, Jesus Aceituno, Kalaga Madhav, Stefan Cikota, F Javier Flores, Julius Göhring, Abani S Nayak, Jose Luis Ortiz, David Peréz-Medialdea, Francisco J Pozuelos, Martin M Roth, Mabel Ruíz-López, Miguel Andrés Sánchez-Carrasco, Sergio Leon-Saval
Photonic lanterns have been widely used in astronomy as low-loss multiplexing devices, typically coupling light from a multimode input into several single-mode outputs. In this work, we present what we believe to be the first multimode-to-multimode photonic lantern specifically designed to combine light from several multimode fibers into a single multimode waveguide. We fabricated and characterized the devices at multiple wavelengths to evaluate the performance of the adiabatic multimode transition. The measured efficiencies exceed 90%, demonstrating low-loss multimode propagation and efficient modal transfer through the lantern structure. This architecture enables efficient multimode beam combination and represents a significant step toward scalable modular telescope concepts without requiring diffraction-limited injection.