The aim of the VUV-FTS project was to develop a new instrument, unique in the world: a Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS) with a interferometer based on wave-front division, possessing resolving power superior to the best beam spectrometers presently available. Such equipment would provide access to extremely detailed spectra, these being precious tools, notably in astrophysics. They would allow scientists, for example, to refine reference models used to identify bodies populating the atmosphere of planets or the constituents of stars.
This high precision work required a combination of optics, mechanics and electronics skills. These were combined in a group directed by Denis Joyeux, in the Charles Fabry laboratory in the Optics Institute in Palaiseau, and the DESIRS beamline, directed by Laurent Nahon.
ANR funding provided the means to follow up an earlier attempt at creating such equipment, which had given encouraging results. The aim of the VUV-STF project was to design a real laboratory instrument available to SOLEIL users, which would include a specific “gas sample controlled-environment” chamber, as well as a total revamp of the first prototype of a Fourier transform spectrometer designed by these same groups.
The only such instrument in the world is now available on a dedicated branch of the DESIRS beamline. Numerous users have been able to take advantage, since 2008, of the unprecedented performance of the spectrometer, helped in their experiments by Nelson de Oliveira, a former Ph.D. student of Denis Joyeux and now the scientist at DESIRS responsible for the FTS branch.
