David Arrazola, Marianela Fernández, Luis Miguel González Fernández, Tomás Belenguer, Willem Jellema, García Rafael, Josefina Torres, Gert de Lange, Jaap Evers, Martin Eggens, Francisco Najarro, Peter Roelfsema. 2018. The Optical Design of a Far Infrared Spectrometer for SPICA. Grating Modules Evaluation. Conference on Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy IX, 10708, DOI: 10.1117/12.2315971
SAFARI is a point source spectrometer for the SPICA mission, which provides far-infrared spectroscopy and high sensitivity. SPICA mission, having a large cold telescope cooled to 6K above absolute zero, will provide an optimum environment where instruments are limited only by the cosmic background. SAFARI is a grating-based spectrometer with two modes of operation, Low Resolution (LR), or nominal mode (R similar to 300) and High Resolution, (HR) (R similar to 2000-11000). The SAFARI shall provide point source spectroscopy with diffraction-limited capability in four spectral bands over 34-230 mu m and a field of view (FoV) on sky over 2’x2′.
Due to the complexity of the optical design of the SAFARI instrument a modular design was selected. Four principal modules are defined: Calibration Module (CS), Input Optics Module (IOM), Beam and Mode Distribution (BMDO) and Grating Modules (GMs). The present work is focused in the last module.
Dispersive optical systems inherently demand the need of volume allocation for the optical system, being this fact somehow proportional to the wavelength and the required resolving power. The image sampling and the size of the detector elements are key drivers in this optical modular design. The optimization process has been performed taking into account the conceptual design parameters obtained during this phase such as collimator and camera optics focal lengths, subsystem diameters and periods and AOIs of the diffraction gratings.
