Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE): a preliminary design of multi-object high resolution spectrograph

TL;DR

The paper presents a preliminary design for a multi-object high-resolution spectrograph for the Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer, aiming to enhance spectroscopic capabilities with innovative optical schemes and reduced technical risks.

Contribution

It introduces a new spectrograph design with novel dispersers and a fast collimator, improving feasibility and reliability over previous concepts.

Findings

Proposed a new disperser design using a grism and prism to reduce line density.

Compared on-axis and off-axis collimator designs for throughput and feasibility.

Achieved a more credible and competitive spectrograph design for MSE.

Abstract

The Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) project will transform the CFHT 3.6m optical telescope to a 10m class dedicated multi-object spectroscopic facility, with an ability to measure thousands of objects with three spectral resolution modes respectively low resolution of R~3,000, moderate resolution of R~6,000 and high resolution of R~40,000. Two identical multi-object high resolution spectrographs are expected to simultaneously produce 1084 spectra with high resolution of 40,000 at Blue (401-416nm) and Green (472-489nm) channels, and 20,000 at Red (626-674nm) channel. At the Conceptual Design Phase (CoDP), different optical schemes were proposed to meet the challenging requirements, especially a unique design with a novel transmission image slicer array, and another conventional design with oversize Volume Phase Holographic (VPH) gratings. It became clear during the CoDP that both designs presented problems of complexity or feasibility of manufacture, especially high line density disperser (general name for all kinds of grating, grism, prism). At the present, a new design scheme is proposed for investigating the optimal way to reduce technical risk and get more reliable estimation of cost and timescale. It contains new dispersers, F/2 fast collimator and so on. Therein, the disperser takes advantage of a special grism and a prism to reduce line density on grating surface, keep wide opening angle of optical path, and get the similar spectrum layout in all three spectral channels. For the fast collimator, it carefully compares on-axis and off-axis designs in throughput, interface to fiber assembly and technical risks. The current progress is more competitive and credible than the previous design, but it also indicates more challenging work will be done to improve its accessibility in engineering.