PRIMA
PRIMAger, a far-infrared hyperspectral and polarimetric instrument
Laure Ciesla (Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille)
Charles Darren Dowell (California Institute of Technology)
Marc Sauvage (CNRS - Guyancourt)
Denis Burgarella (Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille)
J.J.A. Baselmans (SRON–Netherlands Institute for Space Research, TU Delft - Tera-Hertz Sensing)
Matthieu Béthermin (Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg)
Jeffrey T. Booth (California Institute of Technology)
Charles Bradford (California Institute of Technology)
Willem Jellema (SRON–Netherlands Institute for Space Research)
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Abstract
The PRobe far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics (PRIMA) is an infrared observatory for the next decade, currently in Phase A, with a 1.8 m telescope actively cooled to 4.5 K. On board, an infrared camera, PRIMAger, equipped with ultra-sensitive kinetic inductance detector arrays, will provide observers with a coverage of mid-infrared to far-infrared wavelengths from 24 to 264 μm. PRIMAger will offer two imaging modes: the hyperspectral mode will cover the 24 to 84 μm wavelength range with a spectral resolution R ≥ 8, whereas the polarimetric mode will provide polarimetric imaging in four broadbands from 80 to 264 μm. These observational capabilities have been tailored to answer fundamental astrophysical questions such as black hole and star-formation co-evolution in galaxies, the evolution of small dust grains over a wide range of redshifts, and the effects of interstellar magnetic fields in various environments, as well as to open a vast discovery space with versatile photometric and polarimetric capabilities. PRIMAger is being developed by an international collaboration bringing together French institutes (Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille and CEA) through the Center National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES, Paris, France), the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON, Leiden, Netherlands), and the Cardiff University (Cardiff, UK) in Europe, as well as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Goddard Space Flight Center in the United States.