Nature Communications (Jan 2016)

Demonstration of a near-IR line-referenced electro-optical laser frequency comb for precision radial velocity measurements in astronomy

  • X. Yi,
  • K. Vahala,
  • J. Li,
  • S. Diddams,
  • G. Ycas,
  • P. Plavchan,
  • S. Leifer,
  • J. Sandhu,
  • G. Vasisht,
  • P. Chen,
  • P. Gao,
  • J. Gagne,
  • E. Furlan,
  • M. Bottom,
  • E. C. Martin,
  • M. P. Fitzgerald,
  • G. Doppmann,
  • C. Beichman

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10436
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 1
pp. 1 – 9

Abstract

Read online

Laser frequency combs emit a spectrum of equally spaced peaks that can provide precise frequency references useful for astronomy. Here, the authors demonstrate a frequency comb using electro-optical modulation, which has a line spacing that is resolvable using grating spectrographs unlike the mode-locking approach.