Princeton University Gravity Group Astrophysics/Cosmology Lunch - TITLE ADDED

Princeton is building the Coronagraphic High Angular Resolution Imaging Spectrograph (CHARIS), an integral field spectrograph (IFS) for the Subaru telescope. It will be integrated with the Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics (SCExAO) and the AO188 adaptive optics system to image disks and take high contrast spectra of brown dwarfs and hot Jovian planets in a coronagraphic image across J, H, and K bands. The end-to-end system is designed to detect objects five orders of magnitude dimmer than their parent star down to an 80 milliarcsecond inner working angle, which is thanks to the extreme adaptive optics and low inner working angle coronagraph in SCExAO. CHARIS is designed to mitigate the effect of residual quasi-static speckles from SCExAO on the measured spectrum, minimizing cross-contamination between the adjacent spectra on the image. This improves detection limits and reduces the spectral uncertainty commonly associated with the close packing of spectra in an IFS, commonly referred to as crosstalk. I will present the science case, and the overall design of CHARIS. This highlights the choices that must be considered to design an IFS for high signal-to-noise spectra in a coronagraphic image. The design considerations and lessons learned are directly applicable to future exoplanet instrumentation for both extremely large telescopes and space missions designed to image Earth-like exoplanets.