Bringing high-spectral resolution to VLT/SPHERE with a fibre coupling to VLT/CRIRES+

Abstract

Atmospheric composition provides essential markers of the most fundamental properties of giant exoplanets, such as their formation mechanism or internal structure. New-generation exoplanet imagers, like VLT/SPHERE or Gemini/GPI, have been designed to achieve very high contrast (>15 mag) at small angular separations ($<$0.5\as) for the detection of young giant planets in the near-infrared, but they only provide very low spectral resolutions ($R<100$) for their characterization. High-dispersion spectroscopy at resolutions up to $10^5$ is one of the most promising pathways for the detailed characterization of exoplanets, but it is currently out of reach for most directly imaged exoplanets because current high-dispersion spectrographs in the near-infrared lack coronagraphs to attenuate the stellar signal and the spatial resolution necessary to resolve the planet. Project HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging and Spectroscopy of Exoplanets) ambitions to develop a demonstrator that will combine the capabilities of two flagship instruments installed on the ESO Very Large Telescope, the high-contrast exoplanet imager SPHERE and the high-resolution spectrograph CRIRES+, with the goal of answering fundamental questions on the formation, composition and evolution of young planets. In this work, we will present the project, the first set of realistic simulations and the preliminary design of the fiber injection unit that will be implemented in SPHERE.

arXiv comment18 pages, 12 figures. Proceeding of the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation Conference, 10 - 15 June 2018

References in corpus (18)

• A new extensive library of PHOENIX stellar atmospheres and synthetic spectra
• Models of Stars, Brown Dwarfs and Exoplanets
• The orbital motion, absolute mass, and high-altitude winds of exoplanet HD209458b
• The Gemini Planet Imager: First Light
• The ExoMol database: molecular line lists for exoplanet and other hot atmospheres
• The Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics system: enabling high-contrast imaging on solar-system scales
• Detection of Carbon Monoxide and Water Absorption Lines in an Exoplanet Atmosphere
• Fingering convection and cloudless models for cool brown dwarf atmospheres
• Combining high-dispersion spectroscopy (HDS) with high contrast imaging (HCI): Probing rocky planets around our nearest neighbors
• Atmospheric characterization of Proxima b by coupling the Sphere high-contrast imager to the Espresso spectrograph
• Spectral and atmospheric characterization of 51 Eridani b using VLT/SPHERE
• Observing Exoplanets with High Dispersion Coronagraphy. I. The scientific potential of current and next-generation large ground and space telescopes
• Speckle noise and dynamic range in coronagraphic images
• High Performance Lyot and PIAA Coronagraphy for Arbitrarily shaped Telescope Apertures
• A library of ATMO forward model transmission spectra for hot Jupiter exoplanets
• Observing Exoplanets with High-Dispersion Coronagraphy. II. Demonstration of an Active Single-Mode Fiber Injection Unit
• Improving the speckle noise attenuation of simultaneous spectral differential imaging with a focal plane holographic diffuser
• MACAO-CRIRES, a step towards high-resolution spectroscopy

Cited by in corpus (1)

• CUBES Phase A design overview -- The Cassegrain U-Band Efficient Spectrograph for the Very Large Telescope