@inproceedings{28e7e4d1569848f191743d497874d6c9,
title = "FLEX - the first light explorer: A fully OH-suppressed near-infrared integral field spectrograph",
abstract = "FLEX is a concept for a fully OH suppressed near infrared integral field spectrograph, being developed at the AAO.FLEX will be the first instrument to employ fibre Bragg gratings for OH suppression, a radical new technology which cleanly suppresses the atmospheric OH emission lines at 30dB whilst maintaining a high overall throughout of ~90%. In this paper we simulate the expected performance of FLEX, and discuss its impact on the science case. FLEX will effectively make the near-infrared sky 4 mags fainter in the H band and 3 mags fainter in the J band, offering unprecedentedly deep views of the near-infrared Universe. The FLEX concept is optimised for the identification of the sources of first light in the Universe - high redshift galaxies or quasars identified through Lyman-alpha emission or a Lyman break in the continuum spectrum. As such it will consist of a 2x2{"} integral field unit, composed of a 61 lenslet hexagonal array, feeding an existing moderate spectral resolution spectrograph, via an OH-suppression unit. We have simulated the performance of FLEX and show that it can provide robust identification of galaxies at the epoch of reionisation. A FLEX-like instrument on an ELT could measure the ionisation and enrichment of the inter-galactic medium beyond a redshift of 7 via metal absorption lines.",
keywords = "Cosmology, Fibre Bragg gratings, OH suppression, Photonics, Spectroscopy",
author = "Ellis, {Simon C.} and Joss Bland-Hawthorn and Anthony Hortona and Roger Haynes and Andrew McGrath",
year = "2008",
doi = "10.1117/12.788527",
language = "English",
isbn = "9780819472243",
series = "Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering",
publisher = "Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers",
editor = "McLean, {Ian S.} and Casali, {Mark M.}",
booktitle = "Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy II",
note = "SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation : Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy II ; Conference date: 23-06-2008 Through 28-06-2008",
}