Rotational and rotational-vibrational Raman spectroscopy of air to characterize astronomical spectrographs

Bibliographic Details
Title: Rotational and rotational-vibrational Raman spectroscopy of air to characterize astronomical spectrographs
Authors: Vogt, F. P. A., Kerber, F., Mehner, A., Yu, S., Pfrommer, T., Curto, G. Lo, Figueira, P., Parraguez, D., Pepe, F. A., Mégevand, D., Riva, M., Di Marcantonio, P., Lovis, C., Amate, M., Molaro, P., Cabral, A., Osorio, M. R. Zapatero
Publication Year: 2019
Collection: Astrophysics
Physics (Other)
Subject Terms: Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, Physics - Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics, Physics - Instrumentation and Detectors
More Details: Raman scattering enables unforeseen uses for the laser guide-star system of the Very Large Telescope. Here, we present the observation of one up-link sodium laser beam acquired with the ESPRESSO spectrograph at a resolution $\lambda/\Delta\lambda \sim 140'000$. In 900s on-source, we detect the pure rotational Raman lines of $^{16}$O$_2$, $^{14}$N$_2$, and $^{14}$N$^{15}$N (tentatively) up to rotational quantum numbers $J$ of 27, 24, and 9, respectively. We detect the $^{16}$O$_2$ fine-structure lines induced by the interaction of the electronic spin \textbf{S} and end-over-end rotational angular momentum \textbf{N} in the electronic ground state of this molecule up to $N=9$. The same spectrum also reveals the $\nu_{1\leftarrow0}$ rotational-vibrational Q-branch for $^{16}$O$_2$ and $^{14}$N$_2$. These observations demonstrate the potential of using laser guide-star systems as accurate calibration sources for characterizing new astronomical spectrographs.
Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters
Document Type: Working Paper
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.061101
Access URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/1907.05897
Accession Number: edsarx.1907.05897
Database: arXiv
More Details
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.061101