Stellar spectroscopy in the near-infrared with a laser frequency comb
- Creators
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Metcalf, Andrew J.
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Roy, Arpita
Abstract
The discovery and characterization of exoplanets around nearby stars are driven by profound scientific questions about the uniqueness of Earth and our solar system, and the conditions under which life could exist elsewhere in our galaxy. Doppler spectroscopy, or the radial velocity (RV) technique, has been used extensively to identify hundreds of exoplanets, but with notable challenges in detecting terrestrial mass planets orbiting within habitable zones. We describe infrared RV spectroscopy at the 10 m Hobby–Eberly Telescope that leverages a 30 GHz electro-optic laser frequency comb with a nanophotonic supercontinuum to calibrate the Habitable Zone Planet Finder spectrograph. Demonstrated instrument precision <10 cm/s and stellar RVs approaching 1 m/s open the path to discovery and confirmation of habitable-zone planets around M-dwarfs, the most ubiquitous type of stars in our galaxy.
Additional Information
© 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement. Received 9 October 2018; revised 23 January 2019; accepted 28 January 2019 (Doc. ID 347824); published 20 February 2019. We thank the three anonymous reviewers for comments and suggestions that have improved the quality of this work. We thank Zach Newman for his comments on this manuscript and Ian Coddington for his contributions to the development of the laser frequency comb. We thank the HET staff for their critical assistance, expertise, and support. This work would not be possible without them. We are very grateful for help and support from Gary Hill, Hansin Lee, Brian Vattiat, and Phillip McQueen. Data presented herein were obtained at the HET, a joint project of the University of Texas at Austin, the Pennsylvania State University, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and Georg-August Universität Gottingen. The HET is named in honor of its principal benefactors, William P. Hobby and Robert E. Eberly. The HET collaboration acknowledges the support and resources from the Texas Advanced Computing Center. Computations for this research were performed on the Pennsylvania State University's Institute for CyberScience Advanced CyberInfrastructure (ICS-ACI). Funding: National Science Foundation (NSF) (AST-100667, AST-1126413, AST-1310875, AST-1310885); National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) (On-a-Chip Program); National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) (NNX09AB34G); Pennsylvania State University and its Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds; National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) (NNX16A028H, Sagan Fellowship); Heising-Simons Foundation (2017-0494).Attached Files
Published - optica-6-2-233.pdf
Accepted Version - 1902.00500.pdf
Supplemental Material - 3793284.pdf
Files
Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 93793
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20190313-160738989
- AST-100667
- NSF
- AST-1126413
- NSF
- AST-1310875
- NSF
- AST-1310885
- NSF
- National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
- NNX09AB34G
- NASA
- Pennsylvania State University
- Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds
- NNX16A028H
- NASA Sagan Fellowship
- 2017-0494
- Heising-Simons Foundation
- Created
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2019-03-13Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field