Compact designs for high-resolution astronomical spectrometers

Astronomical spectrometers for detailed exoplanet studies need to be broad band, highly efficient, high resolution and extremely mechanically stable. These design constraints can be satisfied with an 'echelle' spectrometer design which consists on a high dispersion grating combined with a prism to separate the diffraction orders. These instruments already exist but they are bulky (size of a car) and difficult to maintain (large vacuum/tempeature controled enclosures, ~3 m^3 volumes). In this project the student will design compact spectrometers of a few tens of cm is size which then will be coupled to telescopes using optical fibres and basic adaptive optics systems. The project will consist on optical designing the device, optimize the optics to minimize aberrations, perform its mechanical design and minimize effects of thermal expansion using novel materials (carbon fibre composites) and demonstrate the performance of the instrument using on-sky measurements.