On-sky performance and lessons learned from the phase I KPIC fiber injection unit

KPIC (Keck Planet Imager and Characterizer) is a series of upgrades to Keck II adaptive optics and the NIR-SPEC spectrograph enabling K-band diffraction-limited high-resolution spectroscopy. KPIC’s single-mode fibers provide a substantial reduction in sky background as well as an extremely stable line-spread function. In this paper we present the on-sky performance of KPIC phase I and lessons learned from calibration and operation of the system, including procedures for maximizing throughput and assessments of long-term line-spread and calibration stability. During phase I, KPIC successfully detected 23 exoplanets and brown dwarfs, with separations from 200 to 3600 mas and K-band magnitudes up to 17.