Investigating spectrograph design parameters with the Yale Doppler diagnostic facility

摘要

The detection of earth-like exoplanets with the Doppler technique requires extreme precision spectrographs stable overtimescales of years. The precision requirement of 10 cm/s is equivalent to a relative uncertainty of 3x10sup-10/sup, and, with the typical dispersion of the Echelle spectrographs used for this purpose, translates to a shift of a few nanometers of the spectrum on the detector. Consequently, the instrument must be well understood and optimized in every component and detail. We describe the Yale Doppler diagnostic facility (YDDF), a dedicated bench mounted Echelle spectrograph inour lab at Yale University, which will be used to systematically study the influence of different components at thisprecision level. The spectrograph bench allows for a flexible optical configuration, high resolution and sampling, andwide spectral coverage. Further, we incorporated a turbulence and guiding simulator to realistically reproduce thesituation at the telescope, enabling end-to-end tests of important parameters.© (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.