Michael Gully-Santiago

Four Quasars above Redshift 6 Discovered by the Canada-France High-z Quasar Survey

The Canada-France High-z Quasar Survey (CFHQS) is an optical survey designed to locate quasars during the epoch of reionization. In this paper we present the discovery of the first four CFHQS quasars at redshifts greater than 6, including the most distant known quasar, CFHQS J2329-0301 at z = 6.43. We describe the observational method used to identify the quasars and present optical, infrared, and millimeter photometry and optical and near-infrared spectroscopy. We investigate the dust properties of these quasars, finding an unusual dust extinction curve for one quasar and a high far-infrared luminosity due to dust emission for another. The mean millimeter continuum flux for CFHQS quasars is substantially lower than that for SDSS quasars at the same redshift, likely due to a correlation with quasar UV luminosity. For two quasars with sufficiently high signal-to-noise ratio optical spectra, we use the spectra to investigate the ionization state of hydrogen at z > 5. For CFHQS J1509-1749 at z = 6.12 we find significant evolution (beyond a simple extrapolation of lower redshift data) in the Gunn-Peterson optical depth at z > 5.4. The line of sight to this quasar has one of the highest known optical depths at z ≈ 5.8. An analysis of the sizes of the highly ionized near-zones in the spectra of two quasars at z = 6.12 and 6.43 suggest that the intergalactic medium surrounding these quasars was substantially ionized before these quasars turned on. Together, these observations point toward an extended reionization process, but we caution that cosmic variance is still a major limitation in z > 6 quasar observations.

Design and early performance of IGRINS (Immersion Grating Infrared Spectrometer)

The Immersion Grating Infrared Spectrometer (IGRINS) is a compact high-resolution near-infrared cross-dispersed spectrograph whose primary disperser is a silicon immersion grating. IGRINS covers the entire portion of the wavelength range between 1.45 and 2.45μm that is accessible from the ground and does so in a single exposure with a resolving power of 40,000. Individual volume phase holographic (VPH) gratings serve as cross-dispersing elements for separate spectrograph arms covering the H and K bands. On the 2.7m Harlan J. Smith telescope at the McDonald Observatory, the slit size is 1ʺ x 15ʺ and the plate scale is 0.27ʺ pixel. The spectrograph employs two 2048 x 2048 pixel Teledyne Scientific and Imaging HAWAII-2RG detectors with SIDECAR ASIC cryogenic controllers. The instrument includes four subsystems; a calibration unit, an input relay optics module, a slit-viewing camera, and nearly identical H and K spectrograph modules. The use of a silicon immersion grating and a compact white pupil design allows the spectrograph collimated beam size to be only 25mm, which permits a moderately sized (0.96m x 0.6m x 0.38m) rectangular cryostat to contain the entire spectrograph. The fabrication and assembly of the optical and mechanical components were completed in 2013. We describe the major design characteristics of the instrument including the system requirements and the technical strategy to meet them. We also present early performance test results obtained from the commissioning runs at the McDonald Observatory.

Preliminary design of IGRINS (Immersion GRating INfrared Spectrograph)

The Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) and the Department of Astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) are developing a near infrared wide-band high resolution spectrograph, IGRINS. IGRINS can observe all of the H- and K-band atmospheric windows with a resolving power of 40,000 in a single exposure. The spectrograph uses a white pupil cross-dispersed layout and includes a dichroic to divide the light between separate H and K cameras, each provided with a 2kx2k HgCdTe detector. A silicon immersion grating serves as the primary disperser and a pair of volume phased holographic gratings serve as cross dispersers, allowing the high resolution echelle spectrograph to be very compact. IGRINS is designed to be compatible with telescopes ranging in diameter from 2.7m (the Harlan J. Smith telescope; HJST) to 4 - 8 m telescopes. Commissioning and initial operation will be on the 2.7m telescope at McDonald Observatory from 2013.

GMTNIRS (Giant Magellan Telescope near-infrared spectrograph): design concept

We are designing a sensitive high resolution (R=60,000-100,000) spectrograph for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMTNIRS, the GMT Near-Infrared Spectrograph). Using large-format IR arrays and silicon immersion gratings, this instrument will cover all of the J (longer than 1.1 μm), H, and K atmospheric windows or all of the L and M windows in a single exposure. GMTNIRS makes use of the GMT adaptive optics system for all bands. The small slits will offer the possibility of spatially resolved spectroscopy as well as superior sensitivity and wavelength coverage. The GMTNIRS team is composed of scientists and engineers at the University of Texas, the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, and Kyung Hee University. In this paper, we describe the optical and mechanical design of the instrument. The principal innovative feature of the design is the use of silicon immersion gratings which are now being produced by our team with sufficient quality to permit designs with high resolving power and broad instantaneous wavelength coverage across the near-IR.

300 nights of science with IGRINS at McDonald Observatory

The Immersion Grating Infrared Spectrometer (IGRINS) is a revolutionary instrument that exploits broad spectral coverage at high-resolution in the near-infrared. IGRINS employs a silicon immersion grating as the primary disperser, and volume-phase holographic gratings cross-disperse the H and K bands onto Teledyne Hawaii-2RG arrays. The use of an immersion grating facilitates a compact cryostat while providing simultaneous wavelength coverage from 1.45 - 2.5 μm. There are no cryogenic mechanisms in IGRINS and its high-throughput design maximizes sensitivity. IGRINS on the 2.7 meter Harlan J. Smith Telescope at McDonald Observatory is nearly as sensitive as CRIRES at the 8 meter Very Large Telescope. However, IGRINS at R≈45,000 has more than 30 times the spectral grasp of CRIRES* in a single exposure. Here we summarize the performance of IGRINS from the first 300 nights of science since commissioning in summer 2014. IGRINS observers have targeted solar system objects like Pluto and Ceres, comets, nearby young stars, star forming regions like Taurus and Ophiuchus, the interstellar medium, photo dissociation regions, the Galactic Center, planetary nebulae, galaxy cores and super novae. The rich near-infrared spectra of these objects motivate unique science cases, and provide information on instrument performance. There are more than ten submitted IGRINS papers and dozens more in preparation. With IGRINS on a 2.7m telescope we realize signal-to-noise ratios greater than 100 for K=10.3 magnitude sources in one hour of exposure time. Although IGRINS is Cassegrain mounted, instrument flexure is sub-pixel thanks to the compact design. Detector characteristics and stability have been tested regularly, allowing us to adjust the instrument operation and improve science quality. A wide variety of science programs motivate new tools for analyzing high-resolution spectra including multiplexed spectral extraction, atmospheric model fitting, rotation and radial velocity, unique line identification, and circumstellar disk modeling. Here we discuss details of instrument performance, summarize early science results, and show the characteristics of IGRINS as a versatile near-infrared spectrograph and forerunner of future silicon immersion grating spectrographs like iSHELL2 and GMTNIRS.3

Near-infrared metrology of high-performance silicon immersion gratings

Silicon immersion gratings offer size and cost savings for high-resolution near-infrared spectrographs. The IGRINS instrument at McDonald Observatory will employ a high-performance silicon immersion echelle grating to achieve spectral resolution R = λ/Δλ40,000 simultaneously over H and K near-infrared band atmospheric windows (1.5-2.5 μm). We chronicle the metrology of an R3 silicon immersion echelle grating for IGRINS. The grating is 30x80 mm, etched into a monolithic silicon prism. Optical interferometry of the grating surface in reflection indicates high phase coherence (<λ/6 peak to valley surface error over a 25 mm beam at λ= 632 nm). Optical interferometry shows small periodic position errors of the grating grooves. These periodic errors manifest as spectroscopic ghosts. High dynamic range monochromatic spectral purity measurements reveal ghost levels relative to the main diffraction peak at 1.6x10-3 at λ = 632 nm in reflection, consistent with the interferometric results Improved grating surfaces demonstrate reflection-measured ghosts at negligible levels of 10-4 of the main diffraction peak. Relative on-blaze efficiency is ~75%. We investigate the immersion grating blaze efficiency performance over the entire operational bandwidth 1500 <λ(nm) < 2500 at room temperature. The projected performance at operational cryogenic temperatures meets the design specifications.

High performance Si immersion gratings patterned with electron beam lithography

Infrared spectrographs employing silicon immersion gratings can be significantly more compact than spectro- graphs using front-surface gratings. The Si gratings can also offer continuous wavelength coverage at high spectral resolution. The grooves in Si gratings are made with semiconductor lithography techniques, to date almost entirely using contact mask photolithography. Planned near-infrared astronomical spectrographs require either finer groove pitches or higher positional accuracy than standard UV contact mask photolithography can reach. A collaboration between the University of Texas at Austin Silicon Diffractive Optics Group and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Microdevices Laboratory has experimented with direct writing silicon immersion grating grooves with electron beam lithography. The patterning process involves depositing positive e-beam resist on 1 to 30 mm thick, 100 mm diameter monolithic crystalline silicon substrates. We then use the facility JEOL 9300FS e-beam writer at JPL to produce the linear pattern that defines the gratings. There are three key challenges to produce high-performance e-beam written silicon immersion gratings. (1) E- beam field and subfield stitching boundaries cause periodic cross-hatch structures along the grating grooves. The structures manifest themselves as spectral and spatial dimension ghosts in the diffraction limited point spread function (PSF) of the diffraction grating. In this paper, we show that the effects of e-beam field boundaries must be mitigated. We have significantly reduced ghost power with only minor increases in write time by using four or more field sizes of less than 500 μm. (2) The finite e-beam stage drift and run-out error cause large-scale structure in the wavefront error. We deal with this problem by applying a mark detection loop to check for and correct out minuscule stage drifts. We measure the level and direction of stage drift and show that mark detection reduces peak-to-valley wavefront error by a factor of 5. (3) The serial write process for typical gratings yields write times of about 24 hours- this makes prototyping costly. We discuss work with negative e-beam resist to reduce the fill factor of exposure, and therefore limit the exposure time. We also discuss the tradeoffs of long write-time serial write processes like e-beam with UV photomask lithography. We show the results of experiments on small pattern size prototypes on silicon wafers. Current prototypes now exceed 30 dB of suppression on spectral and spatial dimension ghosts compared to monochromatic spectral purity measurements of the backside of Si echelle gratings in reflection at 632 nm. We perform interferometry at 632 nm in reflection with a 25 mm circular beam on a grating with a blaze angle of 71.6°. The measured wavefront error is 0.09 waves peak to valley.

High-performance silicon grisms for 1.2-8.0 μm: detailed results from the JWST-NIRCam devices

We have recently completed a set of silicon grisms for JWST-NIRCam. These devices have exquisite optical characteristics: phase surfaces flat to λ/100 peak to valley at the blaze wavlength, diffraction-limited PSFs down to 10-5 of the peak, low scattered light levels, and large resolving-power slit-width products for their width and thickness. The one possible drawback to these devices is the large Fresnel loss caused by the large refractive index of Si. We report here on throughput and phase-surface measurements for a sample grating with a high performance antireflection coating on both the flat and grooved surfaces. These results indicate that we can achieve very high on-blaze efficiencies. The high throughput should make Si grisms an attractive dispersive element for moderate resolution IR spectroscopy in both ground and space based instruments throughout the 1.2-8 μm spectral region.

NIRCam: Development and Testing of the JWST Near-Infrared Camera

The Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) is one of the four science instruments of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Its high sensitivity, high spatial resolution images over the 0.6 - 5 μm wavelength region will be essential for making significant findings in many science areas as well as for aligning the JWST primary mirror segments and telescope. The NIRCam engineering test unit was recently assembled and has undergone successful cryogenic testing. The NIRCam collimator and camera optics and their mountings are also progressing, with a brass-board system demonstrating relatively low wavefront error across a wide field of view. The flight models long-wavelength Si grisms have been fabricated, and its coronagraph masks are now being made. Both the short (0.6 - 2.3 μm) and long (2.4 - 5.0 μm) wavelength flight detectors show good performance and are undergoing final assembly and testing. The flight model subsystems should all be completed later this year through early 2011, and NIRCam will be cryogenically tested in the first half of 2011 before delivery to the JWST integrated science instrument module (ISIM).

Manufacturing of silicon immersion gratings for infrared spectrometers

Silicon immersion gratings have been a promising future technology for high resolution infrared spectroscopy for over 15 years. We report here on our current immersion grating research, including extensive measurements of the performance of micromachined silicon devices. We are currently producing gratings for two high resolution spectrometers: iSHELL at the University of Hawaii and IGRINS at the University of Texas and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute. The gratings are R3 devices with total lengths of ~95 mm. The use of a high index material like silicon permits the spectrometers to have high resolving powers (40,000-70,000) at decent slit sizes with very small (25mm) collimated beams. The lithographic production of coarse grooves allows for instrument designs with continuous wavelength coverage over broad spectral ranges. We discuss the science requirements for grating quality and efficiency and the measurements we have made to verify that the gratings meet these requirements. The measurements include optical interferometry and measurements of the monochromatic point spread function in reflection.