SPIRou: a near-infrared spectropolarimeter for CFHT
Donati JF, Bouvier J, et al

Abstract: While spectropolarimetry in the optical domain is becoming more popular with the successful commissionings of ESPaDOnS@CFHT and NARVAL@TBL, spectropolarimetry in the near infrared remains a virtually unexplored astrophysical research field. Yet, many drastic advances in our knowledge of cool stars and young objects are expected from such an instrument - an efficient echelle spectropolarimeter would for instance be the ultimate tool for investigating earth-like exoplanets around low-mass dwarfs, and would allow studying magnetic fields in a sample of protostellar accretion discs to assess their impact on stellar and planetary formation. , We propose to build a near-infrared cryogenic spectropolarimeter for CFHT, dubbed SPIRou (for SpectroPolarimetre InfraROUge), yielding full spectral coverage from 0.9 to 2.4um in a single exposure at a spectral resolution of about 50,000. This instrument would make CFHT very competitive or even unique in a wide range of hot research topics like planet & star formation. This instrument would be built in the framework of a Canada-France-Taiwan-Hawaii collaboration and could be operational at CFHT as early as 2013.