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

• Main Authors: Phillips, David F. (Author), Glenday, Alexander G. (Author), Li, Chih-Hao (Author), Furesz, Gabor (Author), Benedick, Andrew J. (Contributor), Chang, Guoqing (Contributor), Chen, Li-Jin (Contributor), Korzennik, Sylvain (Author), Sasselov, Dimitar (Author), Kaertner, Franz X. (Contributor), Szentgyorgyi, Andrew (Author), Walsworth, Ronald L. (Author)
• Other Authors: Lincoln Laboratory (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SPIE, 2014-05-15T16:04:57Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

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.
United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA grant NNX09AC92G)
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (Hungarian OTKA-NFU Mobility grant MB08C 81013)