The InfraRed Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) for TMT: Overview of innovative science programs

TL;DR

IRIS for TMT is a highly capable near-infrared spectrograph designed for groundbreaking astronomical observations, including exoplanets, black holes, and early galaxies, with detailed simulations demonstrating its advanced capabilities.

Contribution

This paper presents an overview of IRIS's innovative science programs and capabilities, highlighting its unique potential for diverse astronomical research in the upcoming era of telescopes.

Findings

IRIS can perform integral field spectroscopy of exoplanet atmospheres.

IRIS can measure supermassive black hole masses from 10^4 to 10^10 Msun.

IRIS's sensitivity and resolution enable detailed studies of early galaxies and dark matter substructure.

Abstract

IRIS (InfraRed Imaging Spectrograph) is a first light near-infrared diffraction limited imager and integral field spectrograph being designed for the future Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). IRIS is optimized to perform astronomical studies across a significant fraction of cosmic time, from our Solar System to distant newly formed galaxies (Barton et al. [1]). We present a selection of the innovative science cases that are unique to IRIS in the era of upcoming space and ground-based telescopes. We focus on integral field spectroscopy of directly imaged exoplanet atmospheres, probing fundamental physics in the Galactic Center, measuring 10^4 to 10^10 Msun supermassive black hole masses, resolved spectroscopy of young star-forming galaxies (1 < z < 5) and first light galaxies (6 < z < 12), and resolved spectroscopy of strong gravitational lensed sources to measure dark matter substructure. For each of these science cases we use the IRIS simulator (Wright et al. [2], Do et al. [3]) to explore IRIS capabilities. To highlight the unique IRIS capabilities, we also update the point and resolved source sensitivities for the integral field spectrograph (IFS) in all five broadband filters (Z, Y, J, H, K) for the finest spatial scale of 0.004" per spaxel. We briefly discuss future development plans for the data reduction pipeline and quicklook software for the IRIS instrument suite.