Optical design of the ESPRESSO spectrograph at VLT

P. Spanò, D. Mégevand, J.-M. Herreros, F. M. Zerbi, A. Cabral, P. Di Marcantonio, C. Lovis, S. Cristiani, R. Rebolo López, N. C. Santos, F. Pepe

Abstract
ESPRESSO, a very high-resolution, high-efficiency, ultra-high stability, fiber-fed, cross-dispersed echelle spectrograph located in the Combined-Coud focus of the VLT, has been designed to detect exo-planets with unprecedented radial velocity accuracies of 10 cm/sec over 20 years period. To increase spectral resolution, an innovative pupil slicing technique has been adopted, based onto free-form optics. Anamorphism has been added to increase resolution while keeping the physical size of the echelle grating within reasonable limits. Anamorphic VPH grisms will help to decrease detector size, while maximizing efficiency and inter-order separation. Here we present a summary of the optical design of the spectrograph and of expected performances.

Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy III
(Eds.) Ian S. McLean, Suzanne K. Ramsay, Hideki Takami

SPIE
Vol. 7735,
2010

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