An Integral Field Spectrograph for SNAP

A well-adapted visible and infrared spectrograph has been developed for the SNAP (SuperNova/Acceleration Probe) experiment proposed for JDEM. The primary goal of this instrument is to ensure the control of Type Ia supernovae. The spectrograph is also a key element for calibration and is able to measure redshift of some thousands of galaxy spectra both in visible and IR. An instrument based on an integral field method with the powerful concept of imager slicing has been designed and is presented. We present the current design and expected performances. We show that with the current optimization and the proposed technology, we expect the most sensitive instrument proposed on this kind of mission. We recall the readiness of the concept and of the slicer technology thanks to large prototyping efforts performed in France which validate the proposition. This work is supported in France by CNRS/INSU, CNRS/IN2P3 and by the French spatial agency (CNES).