Making SPIFFI SPIFFIER: Upgrade of the SPIFFI instrument for use in ERIS and performance analysis from re-commissioning

TL;DR

The paper details the upgrade and performance analysis of the SPIFFI instrument, enhancing its capabilities for immediate scientific use and preparing it for integration into the ERIS system on the VLT.

Contribution

It reports on the technological upgrades to SPIFFI, demonstrating improved throughput and resolution, and discusses future enhancements for SPIFFIER before ERIS integration.

Findings

Increased throughput and resolution after upgrade

Enhanced performance enables immediate scientific use

Preparation for SPIFFIER integration into ERIS

Abstract

SPIFFI is an AO-fed integral field spectrograph operating as part of SINFONI on the VLT, which will be upgraded and reused as SPIFFIER in the new VLT instrument ERIS. In January 2016, we used new technology developments to perform an early upgrade to optical subsystems in the SPIFFI instrument so ongoing scientific programs can make use of enhanced performance before ERIS arrives in 2020. We report on the upgraded components and the performance of SPIFFI after the upgrade, including gains in throughput and spatial and spectral resolution. We show results from re-commissioning, highlighting the potential for scientific programs to use the capabilities of the upgraded SPIFFI. Finally, we discuss the additional upgrades for SPIFFIER which will be implemented before it is integrated into ERIS.