Precise Near-Infrared Radial Velocities
astro-ph.SR
/ Authors
Peter Plavchan, Peter Gao, Jonathan Gagne, Elise Furlan, Carolyn Brinkworth, Michael Bottom, Angelle Tanner, Guillem Anglada-Escude, Russel White, Cassy Davison
and 24 more authors
Sean Mills, Chas Beichman, John Asher Johnson, David Ciardi, Kent Wallace, Bertrand Mennesson, Gautam Vasisht, Lisa Prato, Stephen Kane, Sam Crawford, Tim Crawford,
/ Abstract
We present the results of two 2.3 micron near-infrared radial velocity surveys to detect exoplanets around 36 nearby and young M dwarfs. We use the CSHELL spectrograph (R ~46,000) at the NASA InfraRed Telescope Facility, combined with an isotopic methane absorption gas cell for common optical path relative wavelength calibration. We have developed a sophisticated RV forward modeling code that accounts for fringing and other instrumental artifacts present in the spectra. With a spectral grasp of only 5 nm, we are able to reach long-term radial velocity dispersions of ~20-30 m/s on our survey targets.