ELT HARMONI: Image Slicer Preliminary Design

TL;DR

Harmoni is a complex integral field spectrograph for the ELT, featuring multiple spatial scales and spectral settings, with a focus on the preliminary design and performance of its image slicer.

Contribution

This paper presents the preliminary design and performance analysis of the Harmoni image slicer, including image quality, pupil distortion, and slit geometry, for the first light ELT instrument.

Findings

Design successfully creates a long output slit from a rectangular field of view.

Performance analysis includes image quality, pupil distortion, and slit geometry.

Design optimizations address straylight and diffraction effects.

Abstract

Harmoni is the ELT's first light visible and near-infrared integral field spectrograph. It will provide four different spatial scales, ranging from coarse spaxels of 60 x 30 mas best suited for seeing limited observations, to 4 mas spaxels that Nyquist sample the diffraction limited point spread function of the ELT at near-infrared wavelengths. Each spaxel scale may be combined with eleven spectral settings, that provide a range of spectral resolving powers from R 3500 to R 20000 and instantaneous wavelength coverage spanning the 0.47 - 2.45 {\mu}m wavelength range of the instrument. The consortium consists of several institutes in Europe under leadership of Oxford University. Harmoni is starting its Final Design Phase after a Preliminary Design Phase in November, 2017. The CRAL has the responsibility of the Integral Field Unit design linking the Preoptics to the 4 Spectrographs. It is composed of a field splitter associated with a relay system and an image slicer that create from a rectangular Field of View a very long (540mm) output slit for each spectrograph. In this paper, the preliminary design and performances of Harmoni Image Slicer will be presented including image quality, pupil distortion and slit geometry. It has been designed by CRAL for Harmoni PDR in November, 2017. Special emphases will be put on straylight analysis and slice diffraction. The optimisation of the manufacturing and slit geometry will also be reported.