End-to-end Simulation of the SCALES Integral Field Spectrograph

TL;DR

This paper presents detailed end-to-end simulations of the SCALES instrument, a thermal-infrared integral field spectrograph for Keck, to evaluate its scientific capabilities for exoplanet detection and characterization.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive simulation pipeline that models the entire observational process of SCALES, aiding in instrument design and scientific planning.

Findings

High-fidelity mock data generation for SCALES

Assessment of exoplanet detection capabilities

Validation of data reduction pipeline

Abstract

We present end-to-end simulations of SCALES, the third generation thermal-infrared diffraction limited imager and low/med-resolution integral field spectrograph (IFS) being designed for Keck. The 2-5 micron sensitivity of SCALES enables detection and characterization of a wide variety of exoplanets, including exoplanets detected through long-baseline astrometry, radial-velocity planets on wide orbits, accreting protoplanets in nearby star-forming regions, and reflected-light planets around the nearest stars. The simulation goal is to generate high-fidelity mock data to assess the scientific capabilities of the SCALES instrument at current and future design stages. The simulation processes arbitrary-resolution input intensity fields with a proposed observation pattern into an entire mock dataset of raw detector read-out lenslet-based IFS frames with calibrations and metadata, which are then reduced by the IFS data reduction pipeline to be analyzed by the user.