Precise Near-Infrared Radial Velocities

Peter Plavchan,Michael Bottom,Claire Geneser,Tim Crawford,Stephanie Leifer,Peter Gao,Carolyn Brinkworth,Bertrand Mennesson,Keeyoon Sung,Elise Furlan,Garrett Pohl,Bernie Walp,Kaspar Von Braun,Gautam Vasisht,David R Ciardi ,G Anglada‐Escudé ,N H Ogden ,Stephen R Kane ,John Asher Johnson,Todd J Henry ,R J White ,Sean Lin,J Kent Wallace ,Brian J Drouin ,C A Beichman ,L Prato ,C Davison ,Sean M Mills ,Joseph Catanzarite ,S Crawford ,Angelle Tanner,Andrew Stufflebeam,Jonathan Gagné ,J B Regan

doi:10.1017/s1743921315006468

Abstract

AbstractWe present the results of two 2.3 μm near-infrared (NIR) radial velocity (RV) 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 (IRTF), 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−1 on our survey targets.

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