Abstract
We have measured apparent fluctuations in stellar radial velocities with the ELODIE fiber-fed crossed-dispersion spectrograph and the 193-cm telescope of Observatoire de Haute-Provence. Within one given night, the fluctuations consist of two terms which may be sorted out. The first comes from imperfect scrambling of the stellar beam; the second arises from photon noise and agrees closely with our published calculations. So far, scrambler noise dominates for bright stars, but a perfect scrambler could be built by combining adatative optics and a single-mode fiber. The photon-noise results confirm that extrasolar planetary searching by the radial-velocity technique may be implemented with relatively small telescopes for a large number of stars. Consequences for the detection of ‘astrophysical noise” are discussed.
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Connes, P., Martic, M. & Schmitt, J. Demonstration of photon-noise limit in stellar radial velocities. Astrophys Space Sci 241, 61–76 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00644215
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00644215