Developments in simulations and software for a near-infrared precision radial velocity spectrograph

We present developments in simulations and software for the Habitable Zone Planet Finder (HPF), an R~50,000 near-infrared cross-dispersed radial velocity spectrograph that will be used to search for planets around M dwarfs. HPF is fiber-fed, operates in the zYJ bands, and uses a 1.7 μm cutoff HAWAII-2RG (H2RG) NIR detector. We have constructed an end-to-end simulator that accepts as input a range of stellar models contaminated with telluric features and processes these through a simulated detector. This simulator accounts for the characteristics of the H2RG, including interpixel capacitance, persistence, nonlinearities, read noise, and other detector characteristics, as measured from our engineering-grade H2RG. It also implements realistic order curvature. We describe applications of this simulator including optimization of the fiber configuration at the spectrograph slit and selection of properties for a laser frequency comb calibration source. The simulator has also provided test images for development of the HPF survey extraction and RV analysis pipeline and we describe progress on this pipeline itself, which will implement optimal extraction, laser frequency comb and emission lamp wavelength calibration, and cross-correlation based RV measurement.