Thursday, July 26, 2012

Imaging the Chopped Hot Plate

Can we image the Chopped Hot Plate (CHP)?

To answer this I used a Zemax model of the medium resolution mode of EXES (echelle chamber only) where the echelle grating is turned into a flat mirror and a 'pupil imaging' KRS5 lens of focal length 38mm (at 633nm wavelength) is placed between the last turning mirror and the detector.

This layout is sketched below:



I placed an 88mm object 2760mm away from the entrance lens to simulate the CHP and I used wavelengths of 633nm and 13.7microns.

Imaging at the Detector

The quick answer to the initial question is that EXES will image the CHP if we move the pupil imaging lens away from the detector:  perhaps about 3mm for 633nm wavelength and about 12mm for 13.7microns wavelength.  The figure below shows the 88mm object imaged at 633nm wavelength into a roughly 2mm image while the 13.7micron wavelength is defocused. (This all depends on where the lens really is and how you measure the distance from the lens to the detector.  I measured from the center of a 5mm thick lens to the face of the detector.)



 




In the image below I show the effects of moving the pupil imaging lens away from the detector in two 3mm steps.  I've indicated the changing distance from the detector to the outboard vertex of the biconvex lens.  I've kept the total distance from the turning mirror to the detector constant at 191.23mm - which may or may not be accurate.









New Pupils and New Foci

I defined the entrance lens as the aperture stop, which created pupils at the turning mirror before the slit and also about 12mm before the pupil imaging lens.

At 633nm wavelength foci within the instrument now occur about 112mm beyond the cold stop, also about 1/3 of the way from the grating toward the second hit on the paraboloid and on the detector.

At 13.7microns wavelength foci occur about 280mm beyond the cold stop, about 100mm beyond the second hit on the paraboloid and on the detector.

Caveats

Although this system will image the CHP, it is extremely inefficient.

Probably the biggest loss is due to small entrance lens and long distance to the CHP, but, in addition to that, the beam becomes quasi-collimated at the slit (about 14mm in diameter) which will cause losses if any slit is in place (see image to right.)

In addition, as always, the model is not the instrument and distances in the model may not always correspond to their counterparts in reality.








Wednesday, July 25, 2012

No optical light from SCHP

We tried to see if we could get light from the SCHP, set at temperatures of 23C, 100C and 200C.

We set the ctdelay to 150 (exptime=4s) and took 16 coadded frames, and repeated for 10 images for each setting.

All images were taken in imaging mode or pupil imaging mode; echelle at face-on, echelon bypassed, slit/decker/filter OPEN.

In B_12_07_25/

b000
b001-b010, T=23C, imaging mode
b011-b020, T=100C, imaging mode
b021-b030, T=100C, pupil imaging (25.4mm KRS5 lens)
b031-b040, T=200C, pupil imaging (25.4mm KRS5 lens)
b041-b050, T=200C, imaging mode

Taking only good pixel values (between 8125 and 10625 for coadded frames / 16.0)
We get:

Setting                          mean pixel value +/- stddev(pixel value)
T=23 C , imaging        9243 +/- 3
T=100 C, imaging       9244 +/- 3
T=100 C, pupil            9245 +/- 3
T=200 C, pupil            9244 +/- 3
T=200 C, imaging       9242 +/- 3





TAAS SCHP instructions

Al Howard installed the Small Chopped Hot Plate (SCHP) on TAAS and gave this rundown of how to use it.

1) turn on the motion control box on the TAAS E-rack.
2) turn on the AC Power to the hot-plate, located on the hot plate stage (the tub must be removed).
3) Open SCHP1.vi to control the motion of the SCHP.
           - Press "Home" and wait for motion to complete
           - Load "Mid-position 144X 144Z" to center the plate.
           - the plate has a full range of motion of 288mm in X and 288mm in Z.
4) Open "Temperature control.exe" to control plate temperature.
           - make sure port is set to COM7, and hit "Open COM Port"
           - enter desired plate temperature
           - plate has range of temperature of ~23 C (room temperature) to 200 C.
 
For shutting down, the only essential thing is to turn off the AC power to the hot plate (located on the SCHP stage, under the tub).