Calibrating echelle spectrographs with Fabry-Perot etalons release_uzvdaicncbgjpgghf2e433mogu

by Florian F. Bauer, Mathias Zechmeister, Ansgar Reiners

Released as a article .

2015  

Abstract

Over the past decades hollow-cathode lamps have been calibration standards for spectroscopic measurements. Advancing to cm/s radial velocity precisions with the next generation of instruments requires more suitable calibration sources with more lines and less dynamic range problems. Fabry-Perot interferometers provide a regular and dense grid of lines and homogeneous amplitudes making them good candidates for next generation calibrators. We investigate the usefulness of Fabry-Perot etalons in wavelength calibration, present an algorithm to incorporate the etalon spectrum in the wavelength solution and examine potential problems. The quasi periodic pattern of Fabry-Perot lines is used along with a hollow-cathode lamp to anchor the numerous spectral features on an absolute scale. We test our method with the HARPS spectrograph and compare our wavelength solution to the one derived from a laser frequency comb. The combined hollow-cathode lamp/etalon calibration overcomes large distortion (50 m/s) in the wavelength solution of the HARPS data reduction software. Direct comparison to the laser frequency comb bears differences of only maximum 10 m/s. Combining hollow-cathode lamps with Fabry-Perot Interferometers can lead to substantial improvements in the wavelength calibration of echelle spectrographs. Etalons can provide economical alternatives to the laser frequency comb, especially for smaller projects.
In text/plain format

Archived Files and Locations

application/pdf  6.4 MB
file_7gwe6slwkfajbajpm7ymutgyhm
arxiv.org (repository)
web.archive.org (webarchive)
Read Archived PDF
Preserved and Accessible
Type  article
Stage   submitted
Date   2015-06-25
Version   v1
Language   en ?
arXiv  1506.07887v1
Work Entity
access all versions, variants, and formats of this works (eg, pre-prints)
Catalog Record
Revision: 449f1910-cec9-4a60-94f2-d12200eb86ee
API URL: JSON