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.