Abstract

“High-resolution, stabilised, echelle spectrographs play a key role in exoplanet science, from the discovery of the first exoplanet around a main-sequence star, to the study of planetary atmospheres, the characterisation of planetary systems and now, the forefront of the search for Earth-like planets. From an optics perspective, high-resolution echelle spectrographs are extremely constrained systems, with each top-level parameter impacting the design of the rest of the optical system. This talk will present an overview on the design of echelle spectrographs and some of the factors that impact their stability. We will discuss the application of these concepts to HARVY : A Highly-repeatable Autonomous extreme-precision Radial Velocity facilitY concept. The HARVY concept consists of four highly efficient (goal: 30% throughput), compact (instrument footprint: ~0.6mX0.5mX0.15m), extreme precision (req: 20cm/s, goal: 5cm/s instrument stability) radial-velocity, echelle-spectrographs each efficiently coupled to their own off-the-shelf 1.5m telescope; with the aim to increase the accessibility of radial velocity facilities, easing the bottle-neck on exoplanet transit follow-up and enabling further large-scale intensive search for low-mass, long-period, ‘Earth-like’ planets around main-sequence stars.”