Institute of Physics | 2015 Feb 18
The hunt for Earth-like planets around distant stars could soon become a lot easier thanks to a technique developed by researchers in Germany.Click to play embedded YouTube video.
In a paper published today, 18 February, in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society’s New Journal of Physics, the team of researchers have successfully demonstrated how a solar telescope can be combined with a piece of technology that has already taken the physics world by storm—the laser frequency comb (LFC).
It is expected the technique will allow a spectral analysis of distant stars with unprecedented accuracy, as well as advance research in other areas of astrophysics, such as detailed observations of the Sun and the measurement of the accelerating universe by observing distant quasars.
The LFC is a tool for measuring the colour—or frequency—of light, and has been responsible for generating some of the most precise measurements ever made. An LFC is created by a laser that emits continuous pulses of light, containing millions of different colours, often spanning almost the entire visible spectrum.
When the different colours are separated based on their individual frequencies—the speed with which that particular light wave oscillates—they form a “comb-like” graph with finely spaced lines, or “teeth”, representing the individual frequencies.
This “comb” can then be used as a “ruler” to precisely measure the frequency of light from a wide range of sources, such as lasers, atoms or stars. ...
Comb-calibrated solar spectroscopy through a multiplexed single-mode fiber channel - R A Probst et al
- New Journal of Physics 17(2) 023048 (Feb 2015) DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/17/2/023048