Murdock Hart

Prime Focus Spectrograph for the Subaru telescope: massively multiplexed optical and near-infrared fiber spectrograph

Abstract. The Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) is an optical/near-infrared multifiber spectrograph with 2394 science fibers distributed across a 1.3-deg diameter field of view at the Subaru 8.2-m telescope. The wide wavelength coverage from 0.38  μm to 1.26  μm, with a resolving power of 3000, simultaneously strengthens its ability to target three main survey programs: cosmology, galactic archaeology and galaxy/AGN evolution. A medium resolution mode with a resolving power of 5000 for 0.71  μm to 0.89  μm will also be available by simply exchanging dispersers. We highlight some of the technological aspects of the design. To transform the telescope focal ratio, a broad-band coated microlens is glued to each fiber tip. A higher transmission fiber is selected for the longest part of the cable system, optimizing overall throughput; a fiber with low focal ratio degradation is selected for the fiber-positioner and fiber-slit components, minimizing the effects of fiber movements and fiber bending. Fiber positioning will be performed by a positioner consisting of two stages of piezo-electric rotary motors. The positions of these motors are measured by taking an image of artificially back-illuminated fibers with the metrology camera located in the Cassegrain container; the fibers are placed in the proper location by iteratively measuring and then adjusting the positions of the motors. Target light reaches one of the four identical fast-Schmidt spectrograph modules, each with three arms. The PFS project has passed several project-wide design reviews and is now in the construction phase.

Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) for the Subaru telescope: overview, recent progress, and future perspectives

PFS (Prime Focus Spectrograph), a next generation facility instrument on the 8.2-meter Subaru Telescope, is a very wide-field, massively multiplexed, optical and near-infrared spectrograph. Exploiting the Subaru prime focus, 2394 reconfigurable fibers will be distributed over the 1.3 deg field of view. The spectrograph has been designed with 3 arms of blue, red, and near-infrared cameras to simultaneously observe spectra from 380nm to 1260nm in one exposure at a resolution of ~1.6 - 2.7Å. An international collaboration is developing this instrument under the initiative of Kavli IPMU. The project is now going into the construction phase aiming at undertaking system integration in 2017-2018 and subsequently carrying out engineering operations in 2018-2019. This article gives an overview of the instrument, current project status and future paths forward.

The near infrared camera for the Subaru Prime Focus Spectrograph

We present the detailed design of the near infrared camera for the SuMIRe (Subaru Measurement of Images and Redshifts) Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) being developed for the Subaru Telescope. The PFS spectrograph is designed to collect spectra from 2394 objects simultaneously, covering wavelengths that extend from 380 nm - 1.26 μm. The spectrograph is comprised of four identical spectrograph modules, with each module collecting roughly 600 spectra from a robotic fiber positioner at the telescope prime focus. Each spectrograph module will have two visible channels covering wavelength ranges 380 nm - 640 nm and 640 nm - 955 nm, and one near infrared (NIR) channel with a wavelength range 955 nm - 1.26 μm. Dispersed light in each channel is imaged by a 300 mm focal length, f/1.07, vacuum Schmidt camera onto a 4k x 4k, 15 µm pixel, detector format. For the NIR channel a HgCdTe substrate-removed Teledyne 1.7 μm cutoff device is used. In the visible channels, CCDs from Hamamatsu are used. These cameras are large, having a clear aperture of 300 mm at the entrance window, and a mass of ~ 250 kg. Like the two visible channel cameras, the NIR camera contains just four optical elements: a two-element refractive corrector, a Mangin mirror, and a field flattening lens. This simple design produces very good imaging performance considering the wide field and wavelength range, and it does so in large part due to the use of a Mangin mirror (a lens with a reflecting rear surface) for the Schmidt primary. In the case of the NIR camera, the rear reflecting surface is a dichroic, which reflects in-band wavelengths and transmits wavelengths beyond 1.26 μm. This, combined with a thermal rejection filter coating on the rear surface of the second corrector element, greatly reduces the out-of-band thermal radiation that reaches the detector. The camera optics and detector are packaged in a cryostat and cooled by two Stirling cycle cryocoolers. The first corrector element serves as the vacuum window, while the second element is thermally isolated and floats cold. An assembly constructed primarily of silicon carbide is used to mount the Mangin mirror, and to support the detector and field flattener. Thermal isolation between the cold optics and warm ambient surroundings is provided by G10 supports, multi-layer insulation, and the vacuum space within the cryostat. In this paper we describe the detailed design of the PFS NIR camera and discuss its predicted optical, thermal, and mechanical performance.

Focal plane alignment and detector characterization for the Subaru prime focus spectrograph

We describe the infrastructure being developed to align and characterize the detectors for the Subaru Measure- ment of Images and Redshifts (SuMIRe) Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS). PFS will employ four three-channel spectrographs with an operating wavelength range of 3800 °A to 12600 °A. Each spectrograph will be comprised of two visible channels and one near infrared (NIR) channel, where each channel will use a separate Schmidt camera to image the captured spectra onto their respective detectors. In the visible channels, Hamamatsu 2k × 4k CCDs will be mounted in pairs to create a single 4k × 4k detector, while the NIR channel will use a single Teledyne 4k × 4k H4RG HgCdTe device. The fast f/1.1 optics of the Schmidt cameras will give a shallow depth of focus necessitating an optimization of the focal plane array flatness. The minimum departure from flatness of the focal plane array for the visible channels is set the by the CCD flatness, typically 10 μm peak-to-valley. We will adjust the coplanarity for a pair of CCDs such that the flatness of the array is consistent with the flatness of the detectors themselves. To achieve this we will use an optical non-contact measurement system to measure surface flatness and coplanarity at both ambient and operating temperatures, and use shims to adjust the coplanarity of the CCDs. We will characterize the performance of the detectors for PFS consistent with the scientific goals for the project. To this end we will measure the gain, linearity, full well, quantum efficiency (QE), charge diffusion, charge transfer inefficiency (CTI), and noise properties of these devices. We also desire to better understand the non-linearity of the photon transfer curve for the CCDs, and the charge persistence/reciprocity problems of the HgCdTe devices. To enable the metrology and characterization of these detectors we are building two test cryostats nearly identical in design. The first test cryostat will primarily be used for the coplanarity measurements and sub- pixel illumination testing, and the second will be dedicated to performance characterization requiring at field illumination. In this paper we will describe the design of the test cryostats. We will also describe the system we have built for measuring focal plane array flatness, and examine the precision and error with which it operates. Finally we will detail the methods by which we plan to characterize the performance of the detectors for PFS, and provide preliminary results.

Progress with the Prime Focus Spectrograph for the Subaru Telescope: a massively multiplexed optical and near-infrared fiber spectrograph

The Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) is an optical/near-infrared multi-fiber spectrograph with 2394 science fibers, which are distributed in 1.3 degree diameter field of view at Subaru 8.2-meter telescope. The simultaneous wide wavelength coverage from 0.38 μm to 1.26 μm, with the resolving power of 3000, strengthens its ability to target three main survey programs: cosmology, Galactic archaeology, and galaxy/AGN evolution. A medium resolution mode with resolving power of 5000 for 0.71 μm to 0.89 μm also will be available by simply exchanging dispersers. PFS takes the role for the spectroscopic part of the Subaru Measurement of Images and Redshifts (SuMIRe) project, while Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) works on the imaging part. HSC’s excellent image qualities have proven the high quality of the Wide Field Corrector (WFC), which PFS shares with HSC. The PFS collaboration has succeeded in the project Preliminary Design Review and is now in a phase of subsystem Critical Design Reviews and construction. To transform the telescope plus WFC focal ratio, a 3-mm thick broad-band coated microlens is glued to each fiber tip. The microlenses are molded glass, providing uniform lens dimensions and a variety of refractive-index selection. After successful production of mechanical and optical samples, mass production is now complete. Following careful investigations including Focal Ratio Degradation (FRD) measurements, a higher transmission fiber is selected for the longest part of cable system, while one with a better FRD performance is selected for the fiber-positioner and fiber-slit components, given the more frequent fiber movements and tightly curved structure. Each Fiber positioner consists of two stages of piezo-electric rotary motors. Its engineering model has been produced and tested. After evaluating the statistics of positioning accuracies, collision avoidance software, and interferences (if any) within/between electronics boards, mass production will commence. Fiber positioning will be performed iteratively by taking an image of artificially back-illuminated fibers with the Metrology camera located in the Cassegrain container. The camera is carefully designed so that fiber position measurements are unaffected by small amounts of high special-frequency inaccuracies in WFC lens surface shapes. Target light carried through the fiber system reaches one of four identical fast-Schmidt spectrograph modules, each with three arms. All optical glass blanks are now being polished. Prototype VPH gratings have been optically tested. CCD production is complete, with standard fully-depleted CCDs for red arms and more-challenging thinner fully-depleted CCDs with blue-optimized coating for blue arms. The active damping system against cooler vibration has been proven to work as predicted, and spectrographs have been designed to avoid small possible residual resonances.

Current status of the spectrograph system for the SuMIRe/PFS

The Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) is a new facility instrument for Subaru Telescope which will be installed in around 2017. It is a multi-object spectrograph fed by about 2400 fibers placed at the prime focus covering a hexagonal field-ofview with 1.35 deg diagonals and capable of simultaneously obtaining data of spectra with wavelengths ranging from 0.38 um to 1.26 um. The spectrograph system is composed of four identical modules each receiving the light from 600 fibers. Each module incorporates three channels covering the wavelength ranges 0.38–0.65 mu (“Blue”), 0.63–0.97 mu (“Red”), and 0.94– 1.26 mu (“NIR”) respectively; with resolving power which progresses fairly smoothly from about 2000 in the blue to about 4000 in the infrared. An additional spectral mode allows reaching a spectral resolution of 5000 at 0.8mu (red). The proposed optical design is based on a Schmidt collimator facing three Schmidt cameras (one per spectral channel). This architecture is very robust, well known and documented. It allows for high image quality with only few simple elements (high throughput) at the expense of the central obscuration, which leads to larger optics. Each module has to be modular in its design to allow for integration and tests and for its safe transport up to the telescope: this is the main driver for the mechanical design. In particular, each module will be firstly fully integrated and validated at LAM (France) before it is shipped to Hawaii. All sub-assemblies will be indexed on the bench to allow for their accurate repositioning. This paper will give an overview of the spectrograph system which has successfully passed the Critical Design Review (CDR) in 2014 March and which is now in the construction phase.

Focal plane array alignment and cryogenic surface topography measurements for the Prime Focus Spectrograph

We describe the infrastructure developed to align and measure the focal plane arrays (FPA) for the Subaru Measurement of Images and Redshifts (SuMIRe) Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS), and detail the results of these efforts at ambient and operating temperatures. PFS will employ four three-channel spectrographs with an operating wavelength range of 380 nm to 1260 nm. Each spectrograph will be comprised of two visible channels and one near infrared (NIR) channel, and each channel will use individual Schmidt cameras to image the captured spectra onto their respective detectors. In the visible channels, Hamamatsu 2k x 4k charge coupled devices (CCDs) will be mounted in pairs to create a 4k x 4k mosaic, while the NIR channel will use a single Teledyne H4RG 4k x 4k Mercury Cadmium Telluride (HgCdTe) complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) device.

SUBARU prime focus spectrograph integration and performance at LAM

The Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) of the Subaru Measurement of Images and Redshifts (SuMIRe) project for Subaru telescope includes four identical spectrograph modules fed by 600 fibers each. This paper presents the integration, alignment and test procedures for the first spectrograph module composed by an optical entrance unit that creates a collimated beam and distributes the light to three channels, two visible and one near infrared. In particular, we present the performance of the single Red channel module. Firstly, we report on the measured optical performance: optical quality and ghost analysis. We also report on the thermal performance of the visible camera cryostat. Finally, we describe the software used to control and monitor the instrument.

ACCESS: design and sub-system performance

Establishing improved spectrophotometric standards is important for a broad range of missions and is relevant to many astrophysical problems. ACCESS, “Absolute Color Calibration Experiment for Standard Stars”, is a series of rocket-borne sub-orbital missions and ground-based experiments designed to enable improvements in the precision of the astrophysical flux scale through the transfer of absolute laboratory detector standards from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to a network of stellar standards with a calibration accuracy of 1% and a spectral resolving power of 500 across the 0.35-1.7µm bandpass.

Visible camera cryostat design and performance for the SuMIRe Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS)

We describe the design and performance of the SuMIRe Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) visible camera cryostats. SuMIRe PFS is a massively multi-plexed ground-based spectrograph consisting of four identical spectrograph modules, each receiving roughly 600 fibers from a 2394 fiber robotic positioner at the prime focus. Each spectrograph module has three channels covering wavelength ranges 380 nm - 640 nm, 640 nm - 955 nm, and 955 nm - 1.26 um, with the dispersed light being imaged in each channel by a f/1.07 vacuum Schmidt camera. The cameras are very large, having a clear aperture of 300 mm at the entrance window, and a mass of ~280 kg. In this paper we describe the design of the visible camera cryostats and discuss various aspects of cryostat performance.