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23 June 2022 Simulations of the spectral resolving power of a compact space-borne immersion-echelle spectrometer using mid-infrared wave tracing
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Abstract

We performed wave-optics-based numerical simulations at mid-infrared wavelengths to investigate how the presence or absence of entrance slits and optical aberrations affect the spectral resolving power R of a compact, high-spectral-resolving-power spectrometer containing an immersion-echelle grating. We tested three cases of telescope aberration (aberration-free, astigmatism, and spherical aberration), assuming the aberration budget of the Space Infrared Telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics, which has a 20     μm wavelength diffraction limit. In cases with a slit, we found that the value of R at around 10 to 20  μm is approximately independent of the assumed aberrations, which is significantly different from the prediction of geometrical optics. Our results also indicate that diffraction from the slit improves R by enlarging the effective illuminated area on the grating window and that this improvement decreases at short wavelengths. For the slit-less cases, we found that the impact of aberrations on R can be roughly estimated using the Strehl ratio.

CC BY: © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.
Satoshi Itoh, Daisuke Ishihara, Takehiko Wada, Takao Nakagawa, Shinki Oyabu, Hidehiro Kaneda, Yasuhiro Hirahara, and The SMI Consortium "Simulations of the spectral resolving power of a compact space-borne immersion-echelle spectrometer using mid-infrared wave tracing," Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems 8(2), 025004 (23 June 2022). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JATIS.8.2.025004
Received: 8 August 2021; Accepted: 5 June 2022; Published: 23 June 2022
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Cited by 1 scholarly publication.
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KEYWORDS
Spectral resolution

Diffraction gratings

Diffraction

Monochromatic aberrations

Spectroscopy

Point spread functions

Geometrical optics

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