The Impact of Fiber Cross Contamination on Radial Velocity Precision

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Ji, Chenyang, Wang, Sharon Xuesong, Zhang, Kai, Wang, Liang
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Ji, Chenyang
Wang, Sharon Xuesong
Zhang, Kai
Wang, Liang
author_facet Ji, Chenyang
Wang, Sharon Xuesong
Zhang, Kai
Wang, Liang
contents High-resolution spectrographs with precise radial velocity (PRV) capabilities require careful considerations in instrumental design and data processing in order to reach the 10 cm/s-level precision, which is needed for detecting Earth-like planets. In this work, we investigate the impact of fiber cross contamination on the RV precision via simulations, as modern PRV spectrographs often have multiple fiber traces on their spectral images. We simulated extracted 1-D spectra under the preliminary design of CHORUS, short for the Canary Hybrid Optical high-Resolution Ultra-stable Spectrograph, a dual-arm PRV spectrograph under construction for the Gran Telescopio de Canarias. We considered two types of fiber cross contaminations: contamination from calibration traces to neighboring science traces (or cal-sci contamination) and between science traces (or sci-sci contamination). We present results in four different scenarios: photon noise only, cal-sci contamination only, sci-sci contamination only, and all effects combined. For the preliminary design of CHORUS, we estimated that the cal-sci contamination fraction is smaller than 0.0001% in flux across the whole CCD for either arm, resulting in a negligible impact on the RV precision. Assuming worst-case scenarios, we estimated the sci-sci contamination to be up to 0.1% in some traces, corresponding to an additional RV error of up to 10 cm/s. We demonstrate the importance of considering fiber-trace spacing and cross contamination in PRV spectrographs, and we recommend careful design, operation, and spectral extraction algorithms to minimize and mitigate cross contamination to achieve the best possible instrumental RV precision.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_19994
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Impact of Fiber Cross Contamination on Radial Velocity Precision
Ji, Chenyang
Wang, Sharon Xuesong
Zhang, Kai
Wang, Liang
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
High-resolution spectrographs with precise radial velocity (PRV) capabilities require careful considerations in instrumental design and data processing in order to reach the 10 cm/s-level precision, which is needed for detecting Earth-like planets. In this work, we investigate the impact of fiber cross contamination on the RV precision via simulations, as modern PRV spectrographs often have multiple fiber traces on their spectral images. We simulated extracted 1-D spectra under the preliminary design of CHORUS, short for the Canary Hybrid Optical high-Resolution Ultra-stable Spectrograph, a dual-arm PRV spectrograph under construction for the Gran Telescopio de Canarias. We considered two types of fiber cross contaminations: contamination from calibration traces to neighboring science traces (or cal-sci contamination) and between science traces (or sci-sci contamination). We present results in four different scenarios: photon noise only, cal-sci contamination only, sci-sci contamination only, and all effects combined. For the preliminary design of CHORUS, we estimated that the cal-sci contamination fraction is smaller than 0.0001% in flux across the whole CCD for either arm, resulting in a negligible impact on the RV precision. Assuming worst-case scenarios, we estimated the sci-sci contamination to be up to 0.1% in some traces, corresponding to an additional RV error of up to 10 cm/s. We demonstrate the importance of considering fiber-trace spacing and cross contamination in PRV spectrographs, and we recommend careful design, operation, and spectral extraction algorithms to minimize and mitigate cross contamination to achieve the best possible instrumental RV precision.
title The Impact of Fiber Cross Contamination on Radial Velocity Precision
topic Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.19994