The grism is a versatile dispersion element for an astronomical instrument ranging from ultraviolet to infrared. Major benefit of using a grism in a space application, instead of a reflection grating, is the size reduction of optical system because collimator and following optical elements could locate near by the grism. The surface relief (SR) grism is consisted a transmission grating and a prism, vertex angle of which is adjusted to redirect the diffracted beam straight along the direct vision direction at a specific order and wavelength. The volume phase holographic (VPH) grism consists a thick VPH grating sandwiched between two prisms, as specific order and wavelength is aligned the direct vision direction. The VPH grating inheres ideal diffraction efficiency on a higher dispersion application. On the other hand, the SR grating could achieve high diffraction efficiency on a lower dispersion application. Five grisms among eleven for the Faint Object Camera And Spectrograph (FOCAS) of the 8.2m Subaru Telescope with the resolving power from 250 to 3,000 are SR grisms fabricated by a replication method. Six additional grisms of FOCAS with the resolving power from 3,000 to 7,000 are VPH grisms. We propose “Quasi-Bragg grism” for a high dispersion spectroscopy with wide wavelength range.
The germanium immersion grating for instance could reduce 1/64 as the total volume of a spectrograph with a conventional reflection grating since refractive index of germanium is over 4.0 from 1.6 to 20 μm. The prototype immersion gratings for the mid-InfraRed High dispersion Spectrograph (IRHS) are successfully fabricated by a nano-precision machine and grinding cup of cast iron with electrolytic dressing method.
We have successfully fabricated germanium immersion gratings with resolving power of 45,000 at 10 μm by using a nano precision 3D grinding machine and ELID (ELectrolytic In-process Dressing) method. However the method spends large amount of machine times. We propose grooves shape with a new principle for a solid grating, which
achieves high performance and lower cost. We have developed volume phase holographic (VPH) grisms with zinc selenide (ZnSe) prisms for spectrograph of the Subaru Telescope and the other telescopes. While a VPH grism with high index prisms achieves higher dispersion,
diffraction efficiency of VPH grating decreases toward higher orders. A "quasi-Bragg grating" which inherits advantage of a VPH grating achieves high diffraction efficiency toward higher orders. Wavelength tuners with a pair of counter-rotation prisms for a VPH and quasi-Bragg grating obtain high diffraction efficiency over wide wavelength range. The novel immersion grating, VPH grism with high index prisms, quasi-Bragg
grating and wavelength tuners dramatically reduce volumes of astronomical spectrographs.
We fabricated a large size (110x106mm2) Volume Phase Holographic (VPH) grism which was extremely high efficiency and dispersion. In June 2003, the VPH grism with straight wavelength of 450nm and the resolution 2500, installed in Subaru telescope used for the Faint Object Camera And Spectroscopic (FOCAS) for a test observation. As a result of this performance assessment, it was verified that our optimal design and fabrication process was valid. Liquid photopolymer is used for VPH grating as photosensitive materials. We design the optimal parameters such as grating thickness and strength of the refractive index modulation, which is crucial in obtaining a well performing grism, by reference to Rigorous Coupled Wave Analysis (RCWA). Here, the optimal design and fabrication procedure, and the evaluation of high performance VPH grism (wavelength:520nm, resolution:3000, grating period:1μm) will be discussed.
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