The Centre for Advanced Instrumentation (CfAI) of Durham University (UK) has developed a conceptual design for the Integral Field Unit (IFU) for EAGLE based on diamond-machined monolithic multi-faceted metal-mirror arrays as an alternative to the glass IFU which is currently baselined. The CfAI has built up substantial expertise with the design, manufacture, integration, alignment and acceptance testing of such systems, through the successful development of IFUs for the Gemini Near-InfraRed Spectrograph (GNIRS) and JWST NIRSpec and 24 IFUs for ESO’s K-band Multi-Object Spectrometer (KMOS). The unprecedented performance of the KMOS IFUs (Strehl < 0.8 across the field, throughput rising from 86% at a wavelength of 1 micron to 93% at 2.5 micron) demonstrates that the current state-of-the-art technology is sufficiently mature to meet the demanding requirements for EAGLE. In addition, the use of monolithic multi-faceted metal mirror arrays will greatly simplify the manufacture, integration and alignment of such systems thus potentially reducing technical and programmatic risks and cost. Through the timely completion of the KMOS IFUs, which required the fabrication of an unprecedented 1152 optical surfaces, the CfAI have demonstrated that they have the capacity to produce the required volume within reasonable schedule constraints. All the facilities (design, fabrication e.g. diamond machining, metrology, integration and test) required for the successful realisation of such systems are available in-house, thus minimising programmatic risks. This paper presents the opto-mechanical design and predicted performance (based on the actual measured performance of the KMOS IFUs) of the proposed metal IFU.

Date Published: 13 September 2012
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 8450, Modern Technologies in Space- and Ground-based Telescopes and Instrumentation II, 84504J (13 September 2012); doi: 10.1117/12.926063

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8450:
Modern Technologies in Space- and Ground-based Telescopes and Instrumentation II
Ramón Navarro; Colin R. Cunningham; Eric Prieto, Editor(s)