18 August 2021 Precision wavelength calibration for radial velocity measurements using uranium lines between 3800 and 6900 Å
Rishikesh Sharma, Abhijit G. Chakraborty
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Abstract

We present the precise wavelength calibration of a high-resolution spectrum using uranium (U) lines in the wavelength range of 3809 to 6833 Å for precision radial velocity (RV) measurements for exoplanet detection or related astrophysical sciences. We identify 1540 well-resolved U lines from a high-resolution (R  =  67  ,  000) spectrum of the uranium-argon hollow cathode lamp (UAr HCL) using PARAS spectrograph in the aforesaid wavelength range. We calculate the neutral and first allowed transitions (Ritz wavelength) of U from its known energy levels and compare them with our observed central wavelengths. We measure an offset of −0.15  mÅ in our final U line list. The line list has an average measurement uncertainty of 15  ms  −  1 (0.013 pixels or 0.28 mÅ). We included these lines to the PARAS data analysis framework to perform the wavelength calibration and then calculate the multi-order RV of PARAS spectra. The typical dispersion of residuals around the wavelength solution of a UAr spectrum, using U lines, is found to be 0.8 mÅ (∼45  m s  −  1). With the use of this line list, we present our results for the precision RV of an on-sky source (an RV standard star) and an off-sky source (an HCL) observed with PARAS along with UAr HCL. We measure the dispersion in absolute drift difference between two fibers (inter-fiber drift) for a span of 6.5 h to be 88  cm s  −  1, and the RV dispersion (σRV) for an RV standard star, HD55575 over the course of ∼450 days to be 3.2  m s  −  1. These results are in good agreement with the previous ones measured using the ThAr HCL. It proves that the ThAr HCL with ∼99  %   pure-Th is replaceable with the UAr HCL for the wavelength calibration of the high-resolution spectrographs such as PARAS (R  ≤  67,000) to achieve an RV precision of 1 to 3  m s  −  1 in the visible region.

© 2021 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) 2329-4124/2021/$28.00 © 2021 SPIE
Rishikesh Sharma and Abhijit G. Chakraborty "Precision wavelength calibration for radial velocity measurements using uranium lines between 3800 and 6900 Å," Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems 7(3), 038005 (18 August 2021). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JATIS.7.3.038005
Received: 10 November 2020; Accepted: 27 July 2021; Published: 18 August 2021
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Cited by 2 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Calibration

Precision calibration

Velocity measurements

Spectrographs

Stars

Thorium

Argon

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