HARMONI: A Narrow Field Near-infrared Integral Field Spectrograph for the E-ELT

We present a concept for a narrow field near-infrared (NIR) integral-field spectrograph (IFS) for the E-ELT called HARMONI—the High Angular Resolution Monolithic Optical and Near-infrared Integral field spectrograph. This IFS is ideally suited to exploit the near diffraction limited performance of the adaptive optics systems at NIR (and red visible) wavelengths of the E-ELT at first light. Although such an E-ELT instrument does represent a substantial increase in scale, no significant technology development is needed to realise this instrument. The instrument will be robust, with few moving mechanisms, designed to act as a workhorse in the early days of the E-ELT. In the era where the James Webb Space Telescope will already be operational, the clear advantages of the E-ELT are its larger collecting area and higher spatial resolution. A narrow field NIR IFS is ideally suited to exploit these capabilities, making HARMONI a unique first-light instrument which will have a dramatic impact in several key areas of observational astrophysics research; from the highest redshift galaxies, through AGN and supermassive black holes, to star and planet formation in our own galaxy.