Paper:	BLISS for SPICA: Far-IR Spectroscopy at the Background Limit
Volume:	375, From Z-Machines to ALMA: (Sub)Millimeter Spectroscopy of Galaxies
Page:	199
Authors:	Bradford, C.M.; the BLISS-SPICA study team
Abstract:	We present the scientific motivation, point designs, and plans for a background-limited infrared-submillimeter spectrograph (BLISS) for the Japanese SPICA mission. SPICA will be a 3.5meter telescope cooled to below 5K and offers the potential for far-IR observations limited only by the zodiacal dust emission and other diffuse foregrounds. BLISS on SPICA will provide moderate-resolution (R ∼ 1000) spectroscopy from 40–600 microns at this background limit, achieving sensitivities below 10−20Wm−2 in modest integrations. This huge advance will enable the first routine survey spectroscopy of the redshift 0.5 to 5 galaxies that produce the cosmic far-IR background. The far-IR fine-structure and molecular transitions are immune to dust extinction, and will unambiguously reveal these galaxies’ redshifts, stellar and AGN contents, gas properties, and metallicities– in aggregate, the history of the population.

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