Design and modeling of a moderate-resolution astronomic spectrograph with volume-phase holographic gratings

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel astronomic spectrograph design using a cascade of volume-phase holographic gratings, achieving high spectral resolution and efficiency, suitable for large telescopes and laboratory prototypes.

Contribution

It presents a new optical design with a cascade of holographic gratings for moderate to high resolution spectroscopy in astronomy.

Findings

Spectrograph achieves up to 75% throughput.

Resolution ranges from 1500 to 7900 depending on version.

Negligible stray light due to grating crosstalk.

Abstract

We present an optical design of astronomic spectrograph based on a cascade of volume-phase holographic gratings. The cascade consists of three gratings. Each of them provides moderately high spectral resolution in a narrow range of 83 nm. Thus the spectrum image represents three lines covering region 430-680 nm. Two versions of the scheme are described: a full-scale one with estimated resolving power of 5300-7900 and a small-sized one intended for creation of a lab prototype, which provides the resolving power of 1500-3000. Diffraction efficiency modeling confirms that the system throughput can reach 75 %, while stray light caused by the gratings crosstalk is negligible. We also propose a design of image slicer and focal reducer allowing to couple the instrument with the 6-m telescope. Finally, we present concept of the opto-mechanical design.