Low-cost multi-integral field unit (IFU) with high-quality optical polishing

E. Prieto; S. Vivès

doi:10.1117/12.671520

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10 July 2006 Low-cost multi-integral field unit (IFU) with high-quality optical polishing

E. Prieto, S. Vivès

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Proceedings Volume 6273, Optomechanical Technologies for Astronomy; 62731P (2006) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.671520
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2006, Orlando, Florida , United States

Abstract

An Integral Field Spectrograph basically consists of an Integral Field Unit (IFU) which slices and re-arranges the initial field along the entrance slit of the spectrograph itself. The IFU is usually composed of a slicer mirror array located at the image plane of the telescope and associated with a row of pupil mirrors and a row of slit mirrors. These optical elements are complex surfaces made of many tilted and decentered mirror sub-surfaces. Such elements can be manufactured using glass standard polishing technics instead of monolithic aluminum diamond turning technics. Standard glass polished optics are usually considered more expensive and time consuming than aluminum diamond turned optics. However standard glass manufacturing technics allow reaching high-level performances: accurate roughness (high throughput), sharp edges (about 1 μm), surface form (image quality), etc. In this paper, we propose a new method of manufacturing and an associated design of IFU which significantly reduce both manufacturing costs and time.

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E. Prieto and S. Vivès "Low-cost multi-integral field unit (IFU) with high-quality optical polishing", Proc. SPIE 6273, Optomechanical Technologies for Astronomy, 62731P (10 July 2006); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.671520

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