Turn-Key Green Astro-Comb.

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The search for exoplanets, or planets orbiting stars other than our sun, is moving forward at a rapid pace. Progress in this field is largely driven by our technological ability to build instruments that can measure tiny radial velocity changes of a star's light as its planet or planets tug it towards us or away from us, creating a tiny "Doppler" shift in the stellar spectrum revealing orbiting companions. This technology in turn is largely limited by our ability to calibrate our planet-hunting instruments. Calibration identifies spurious errors that would otherwise mimic radial motion in a stationary star. The proposal in this case aims to build an easy-to-operate calibration system that will generate a comb of light with peak outputs spaced in wavelength, with fine enough comb scale to significantly advance the current state of the art in planet hunting instrumentation.The calibrator being built will be automated, and is intended for use on the HARPS-N spectrograph located at the TNG telescope in the Canary Islands. It will be a "turn-key", easy-to-operate astro-comb, producing outputs in the middle of the visible spectrum (~500-620 nm), and will enable precision radial velocity measurements with sensitivity 10 cm/s over arbitrarily long periods of time. The calibrator will be usable by telescope operators and observers without the need for laser scientists to be on site. The science thus enabled includes determination of the mass of Earth-like exoplanets, direct measurements of the acceleration of the young universe, and investigation of the constancy of fundamental constants over cosmological time scales.This project will train students and postdoctoral researchers in scientific practices at the interface of ultrafast optical physics and astronomical instrument building and observation. The techniques to be developed will contribute to a wide array of interdisciplinary and commercial applications in fields such as few-cycle optical pulses, molecular spectroscopy, and bioimaging.Funding for this project is being provided by NSF's Division of Astronomical Sciences through its Advanced Technologies and Instrumentation program.