PMAS: The Potsdam Multi‐Aperture Spectrophotometer. I. Design, Manufacture, and Performance

By M. Roth, A. Kelz, T. Fechner, T. Hahn, S. Bauer, T. Becker, P. Böhm, L. Christensen, F. Dionies, J. Paschke and 5 more. 2005

305 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We describe the design, manufacture, commissioning, and performance of PMAS, the Potsdam Multi‐Aperture Spectrophotometer. PMAS is a dedicated integral field spectrophotometer optimized to cover the optical wavelength regime of 0.35–1 μm. It is based on the lens array–fiber bundle principle of operation. The instrument employs an all‐refractive fiber spectrograph, built with CaF2 optics, to provide good transmission and high image quality over the entire nominal wavelength range. A set of user‐selectable reflective gratings provides low to medium spectral resolution of approximately 1.5, 3.2, and 7 Å in first order, depending on the groove density (1200, 600, 300 grooves mm−1). While the standard integral field unit (IFU) uses a 16 × 16 element lens array, which provides seeing‐limited sampling in a relatively small field of view (FOV) in one of three magnifications (8″ × 8″, 12″ × 12″, or 16″ × 16″), a recently retrofitted bare fiber bundle IFU (PPak: PMAS fiber pack) expands the FOV to a hexagonal area with a footprint of 65″ × 74″. Other special features include a cryogenic CCD camera for field acquisition and guiding, a nod‐shuffle mode for beam switching and improved sky background subtraction, and a scanning Fabry‐Pérot etalon in combination with the standard IFU (PYTHEAS mode). PMAS was initially designed and built as an experimental traveling instrument with optical interfaces to various telescopes (Calar Alto 3.5 m, ESO VLT, LBT). It is offered as a common‐user instrument at Calar Alto under contract to MPIA Heidelberg since 2002.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Instrumentation, Surfaces, Coatings and Films

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2bef76cb82704ecb873e4518b3827d2f99a28112

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Instrumentation

Citations in the corpus

CALIFA : a diameter-selected sample for an integral field spectroscopy galaxy survey (2014, methodology): “The instrument used for CALIFA is the Potsdam Multi-Aperture Spectrophotometer (PMAS, Roth et al. 2005) mounted on the 3.5 m telescope of the Calar Alto observatory, and employing the PPak wide-field integral field unit (IFU, Kelz et al. 2006) to sample a field of view (FoV) of ∼1 arcmin2.”
Metallicity gradients in local field star-forming galaxies: insights on inflows, outflows, and the coevolution of gas, stars and metals (2015, methodology): “Every CALIFA galaxy is observed using the fibre bundle integral field unit (IFU) PPak, and two different setups with the Potsdam Multi-Aperture Spectrophotometer (PMAS;Roth et al. 2005; Kelz et al. 2006).”
CALIFA, the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area survey - III. Second public data release (2012, methodology): “We conﬁrm this value with measurements of the width of the guide star on images taken by the Acquisition and Guiding (AG) Camera of the PMAS instrument (Roth et al. 2005), which, as expected, has a slightly larger median value of 1 .”
The star formation history of CALIFA galaxies: Radial structures (2013, methodology): “The observations were carried out with Potsdam Multi-Aperture Spectrophotometer (PMAS, Roth et al. 2005) in the PPak mode (Verheijen et al. 2004) at the 3.5m telescope of the Calar Alto Observatory (CAHA).”
The SAMI Galaxy Survey: Instrument specification and target selection (2014, methodology): “Until recently, the largest IFU survey underway was the CALIFA survey (Sánchez et al. 2012; Walcher et al. 2014) using the Potsdam Multi-Aperture Spectrophotometer (PMAS; Roth et al. 2005) IFU on the 3.5m Calar Alto Telescope.”
PMAS: The Potsdam Multi‐Aperture Spectrophotometer. II. The Wide Integral Field Unit PPak (2005, methodology): “An overall description of the PMAS instrument is given by Roth et al. (2005), hereafter referred to as paper I.”
The CALIFA survey across the Hubble sequence: Spatially resolved stellar population properties in galaxies (2015, methodology): “The observations were carried out with the Potsdam MultiAperture Spectrometer (Roth et al. 2005, PMAS,) in the PPaK mode (Verheijen et al. 2004) at the 3.5m telescope of Calar Alto observatory.”
A characteristic oxygen abundance gradient in galaxy disks unveiled with CALIFA (2013, methodology): “All galaxies were observed using PMAS (Roth et al. 2005) in the PPAK configuration (Kelz et al. 2006), covering a hexagonal field-of-view (FoV) of 74′′×64′′, sufficient to map the full optical extent of the galaxies up to two to three disk effective radii.”
Mass-metallicity relation explored with CALIFA I. Is there a dependence on the star-formation rate? (2013, methodology): “All galaxies were observed using PMAS (Roth et al. 2005) in the PPAK configuration (Kelz et al. 2006), covering a hexagonal field-ofview of 74′′×64′′, sufficient to cover the full optical extent of the galaxies up to 2-3 effective radii.”