IGRINS First Light Instrumental Performance

The Immersion Grating Infrared Spectrometer (IGRINS) is an unprecedentedly minimized infrared cross-dispersed echelle spectrograph with a high-resolution and high-sensitivity optical performance. A silicon immersion grating features the instrument for the first time in this field. IGRINS will cover the entire portion of the wavelength range between 1.45 and $2.45{\mu}m$ accessible from the ground in a single exposure with spectral resolution of 40,000. Individual volume phase holographic (VPH) gratings serve as cross-dispersing elements for separate spectrograph arms covering the H and K bands. On the 2.7m Harlan J. Smith telescope at the McDonald Observatory, the slit size is $1^{\prime\prime}{\times}15^{\prime\prime}$. IGRINS has a $0.27^{\prime\prime}$ pixel-1 plate scale on a $2048{\times}2048$ pixel Teledyne Scientific & Imaging HAWAII-2RG detector with SIDECAR ASIC cryogenic controller. The instrument includes four subsystems; a calibration unit, an input relay optics module, a slit-viewing camera, and nearly identical H and K spectrograph modules. The use of a silicon immersion grating and a compact white pupil design allows the spectrograph collimated beam size to be 25mm, which permits the entire cryogenic system to be contained in a moderately sized rectangular vacuum chamber. The fabrication and assembly of the optical and mechanical hardware components were completed in 2013. In this presentation, we describe the major design characteristics of the instrument and the early performance estimated from the first light commissioning at the McDonald Observatory.