Coupling MOAO with Integral Field Spectroscopy: specifications for the VLT and the E-ELT

TL;DR

This paper uses simulations to define the specifications for MOAO-fed integral field spectrographs on 8m and 42m telescopes, focusing on optimal spatial sampling, PSF contrast, and signal-to-noise ratios for galaxy observations.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive simulation framework to determine the optimal instrument parameters for MOAO-fed integral field spectroscopy on large telescopes.

Findings

Coarse sampling (50-75 mas) suffices for large-scale galaxy dynamics on 42m telescopes.

High signal-to-noise and 34% EE are needed to recover detailed kinematics at z~4.

At z=1.6, 30% EE at 0.25 arcsec is required to distinguish galaxy types.

Abstract

[Abridged] We have developed an end-to-end simulation to specify the science requirements of a MOAO-fed integral field spectrograph on either an 8m or 42m telescope. Our simulations re-scales observations of local galaxies or results from numerical simulations of disk or interacting galaxies. For the current analysis, we limit ourselves to a local disk galaxy which exhibits simple rotation and a simulation of a merger. We have attempted to generalize our results by introducing the simple concepts of "PSF contrast" which is the amount of light polluting adjacent spectra which we find drives the smallest EE at a given spatial scale. The choice of the spatial sampling is driven by the "scale-coupling", i.e., the relationship between the IFU pixel scale and the size of the features that need to be recovered by 3D spectroscopy in order to understand the nature of the galaxy and its substructure. Because the dynamical nature of galaxies are mostly reflected in their large-scale motions, a relatively coarse spatial resolution is enough to distinguish between a rotating disk and a major merger. Although we used a limited number of morpho-kinematic cases, our simulations suggest that, on a 42m telescope, the choice of an IFU pixel scale of 50-75 mas seems to be sufficient. Such a coarse sampling has the benefit of lowering the exposure time to reach a specific signal-to-noise as well as relaxing the performance of the MOAO system. On the other hand, recovering the full 2D-kinematics of z~4 galaxies requires high signal-to-noise and at least an EE of 34% in 150 mas (2 pixels of 75 mas). Finally, we carried out a similar study at z=1.6 with a MOAO-fed spectrograph for an 8m, and find that at least an EE of 30% at 0.25 arcsec spatial sampling is required to understand the nature of disks and mergers.