The Keck Planet Imager and Characterizer: Phase I fiber injection unit early performance and commissioning

TL;DR

The paper reports on the early performance and commissioning results of the KPIC Phase I fiber injection unit, which enhances direct imaging and high-resolution spectroscopy of exoplanets using Keck II's adaptive optics system.

Contribution

It introduces the KPIC Phase I fiber injection unit and presents initial performance metrics, advancing capabilities for exoplanet spectral characterization.

Findings

High throughput achieved in initial tests

Stable operation under various conditions

Enhanced sensitivity for exoplanet spectroscopy

Abstract

The Keck Planet Imager and Characterizer (KPIC) is an upgrade to the Keck II adaptive optics system and instrument suite with the goal of improving direct imaging and high-resolution spectroscopic characterization capabilities for giant exoplanets. KPIC Phase I includes a fiber injection unit (FIU) downstream of a new pyramid wavefront sensor, coupling planet light to a single mode fiber fed into NIRSPEC, Keck's high-resolution infrared spectrograph. This enables high-dispersion spectroscopy (HDS) of directly imaged exoplanets at smaller separation and higher contrast, improving our spectral characterization capabilities for these objects. Here, we report performance results from the KPIC Phase I FIU commissioning, including analysis of throughput, stability, and sensitivity of the instrument.