The GRAVITY integrated optics beam combination

Gravity is a 2nd generation interferometric instrument for VLTI. It will combine 4 telescopes in dual feed in the K band to study general relativity effects around the Galactic Center black hole. The concept of Gravity is based on two equivalent beam combiner instruments: the scientific one fed by the science target (Sgr A*) and the fringe tracker fed by a bright reference star (See Gillessen et al. 1 ). Both beam combination instruments are based on silica on silicon integrated optics (IO) component glued to fluoride glass fiber array. The beam combiners are implemented in a cryogenic vessel cooled at 200°K and back-illuminated by a high power laser used for metrology (Bartko et al. 2 ). This paper is dedicated to the description of the development of the integrated beam combiner assembly.