Development of gas absorption cells for infrared echelle spectrographs

Abstract

High-resolution spectroscopy in the near-infrared could become the leading method for discovering extra-solar planets around very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. To help to achieve an accuracy of about 1 m/s, we are developing a gas cell which consists of a mixture of gases whose absorption spectral lines span all over the near-infrared region. We here present a summary of the working technique and the main results obtained so far.