CARMENES. V: non-cryogenic solutions for YJH-band NIR instruments  

  Amado, Pedro J.
  et al.
  
  Paper 8450-64 of Conference 8450
  Date: Wednesday, 04 July 2012 
  
  Talk

  Currently, every single instrument using NIR detectors is cool down to
  cryogenic temperatures to minimize the thermal flux emitted by a warm
  instrument. Cryogenization, meaning the use of liquid nitrogen to reach the
  working temperature, is a must when the K band is needed for the science case.
  This results in more complex and more expensive instruments. However, science
  cases that do not benefit from observing in the K band, like the detection of
  exoplanets around M dwarfs through the RV technique, can make use of
  non-cryogenic instruments. CARMENES is currently the only instrument
  implementing such a solution. It is being built by a consortium of eleven
  Spanish and German institutions and will conduct an exoplanet survey around M
  dwarfs . Its concept includes two spectrographs, one equipped with a CCD for
  the range 550-1050 nm, and one with HgCdTe detectors for the range from
  0.9-1.7 mum, covering therefore the YJH bands. In this contribution, different
  possibilities are studied for the non-cryogenic solution to be used in
  CARMENES, all of them demonstrated to be feasible, within the requirements of
  the SNR requested by the science case.