Calibration of an echelle spectrograph with an astro-comb: a laser frequency comb with very high repetition rate

Searches for extrasolar planets using precision radial velocity (PRV) techniques are approaching Earth-like planet sensitivity, however require an improvement of one order of magnitude to identify earth-mass planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars. A key limitation is spectrograph calibratio...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Phillips, David F., Glenday, Alexander G., Li, Chih-Hao, Furesz, Gabor, Benedick, Andrew J., Chang, Guoqing, Chen, Li-Jin, Korzennik, Sylvain, Sasselov, Dimitar, Kaertner, Franz X., Szentgyorgyi, Andrew, Walsworth, Ronald L.
Other Authors: Lincoln Laboratory
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: SPIE 2014
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/86990
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8733-2555
Description
Summary:Searches for extrasolar planets using precision radial velocity (PRV) techniques are approaching Earth-like planet sensitivity, however require an improvement of one order of magnitude to identify earth-mass planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars. A key limitation is spectrograph calibration. An astro-comb, an octave-spanning laser frequency comb and a Fabry-Pérot cavity, producing evenly spaced frequencies with large wavelength coverage, is a promising tool for improved wavelength calibration. We demonstrate the calibration of a high-resolution astrophysical spectrograph below the 1 m/s level in the 8000-9000 Å and 4200 Å spectral bands. © (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.