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In this article we present the integral field spectroscopy (IFS) wiki site, http://ifs.wikidot.com; what the wiki is, our motivation for creating it, and a short introduction to IFS. The IFS wiki is designed to be a central repository of information, tips, codes, tools, references, etc., regarding the whole subject of IFS, which is accessible and editable by the whole community. Currently the wiki contains a broad base of information covering topics from current and future integral field spectrographs, to observing, to data reduction and analysis techniques. We encourage everyone who wants to know more about IFS to look at this web-site, and any question you may have you can post from there. And if you have had any experience with IFS yourself, we encourage you to contribute your knowledge and help the site develop its full potential. Before re-inventing the wheel, consult the wiki...
Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS) is a technique that gives simultaneously the spectrum of each spatial sampling element in a given object field. It is a powerful tool which rearranges the data cube (x, y, lambda) represented by two spatial dimensions defining the field and the spectral decomposition in a detector plane. In IFS, the spatial unit reorganizes the field and the spectral unit is being composed of a classical spectrograph.The development of a Collimating Slicer aims at proposing a new type of integral field spectrograph which should be more compact. The main idea is to combine the image slicer with the collimator of the spectrograph, thus mixing the spatial and spectral units. The traditional combination of slicer, pupil and slit elements and the spectrograph collimator is replaced by a new one composed of a slicer and collimator only. In this paper, the state of the art of integral field spectroscopy using image slicers is described. The new system based onto the development of a Collimating Slicer for optical integral field spectroscopy is depicted. First system analysis results and future improvements are discussed. It finally turns out that this new system looks very promising for low resolution spectroscopy.
There are several high-performance adaptive optics systems that deliver diffraction-limited imaging on ground-based telescopes, which renewed the interest of single-mode fiber (SMF) spectroscopy for exoplanet characterization. However, the fundamental mode of a telescope is not well matched to those of conventional SMFs. With the recent progress in asphere manufacturing techniques it may be possible to reshape the fundamental mode of a SMF into any arbitrary distribution. An optimization problem is setup to investigate what the optimal mode field distribution is and what the fundamental throughput limit is for SMF spectroscopy. Both single-object spectrographs and integral-field spectrographs are investigated. The optimal mode for single-object spectrographs is found to be the aperture function of the exit pupil, while for integral-field spectrographs the optimal mode depends on the spatial sampling of the focal plane. For dense sampling, a uniform mode is optimal, while for sparse sampling, the mode of a conventional SMF is near optimal. With the optimal fiber mode, high throughput (>80%) can be achieved when the focal plane is (super) Nyquist sampled. For the Nyquist sampled cases, the optimal mode has almost 20% more throughput than a conventional SMF.
Direct imaging instruments have the spatial resolution to resolve exoplanets from their host star. This enables direct characterization of the exoplanets atmosphere, but most direct imaging instruments do not have spectrographs with high enough resolving power for detailed atmospheric characterization. We investigate the use of a single-mode diffraction-limited integral-field unit that is compact and easy to integrate into current and future direct imaging instruments for exoplanet characterization. This achieved by making use of recent progress in photonic manufacturing to create a single-mode fiber-fed image reformatter. The fiber-link is created with 3D printed lenses on top of a single-mode multi-core fiber that feeds an ultrafast laser inscribed photonic chip that reformats the fiber into a pseudo-slit. We then couple it to a first-order spectrograph with a triple stacked volume phase holographic grating for a high efficiency over a large bandwidth. The prototype system has had a successful first-light observing run at the 4.2 meter William Herschel Telescope. The measured on-sky resolving power is between 2500 and 3000, depending on the wavelength. With our observations we show that single-mode integral-field spectroscopy is a viable option for current and future exoplanet imaging instruments.
Integral-field spectroscopy is the most effective method of exploiting the superb image quality of the ESO-VLT, allowing complex astrophysical processes to be probed on the angular scales currently accessible only for imaging data, but with the addition of information in the spectral dimension. We discuss science drivers and requirements for multiple deployable integral fields for spectroscopy in the near-infrared. We then describe a fully modular instrument concept which can achieve such a capability over a 5-10 field with up to 32 deployable integral fields, each fully cryogenic with 1-2.5 micron coverage at a spectral resolution of ~3000, each with a 4 x 4 field of view sampled at 0.2/pixel to take advantage of the best K-band seeing.
We present the design and lab performance of a prototype lenslet-slicer hybrid integral field spectrograph (IFS), validating the concept for use in future instruments like SCALES/PSI-Red. By imaging extrasolar planets with IFS, it is possible to measure their chemical compositions, temperatures and masses. Many exoplanet-focused instruments use a lenslet IFS to make datacubes with spatial and spectral information used to extract spectral information of imaged exoplanets. Lenslet IFS architecture results in very short spectra and thus low spectral resolution. Slicer IFSs can obtain higher spectral resolution but at the cost of increased optical aberrations that propagate through the down-stream spectrograph and degrade the spatial information we can extract. We have designed a lenslet/slicer hybrid that combines the minimal aberrations of the lenslet IFS with the high spectral resolution of the slicer IFS. The slicer output f/# matches the lenslet f/# requiring only additional gratings.