This work will perform a near-infrared precision radial velocity survey of 100 late M-dwarf stars and brown dwarfs in order to search for new Saturn- or Jupiter-mass exoplanets. The PI and his team plan to use an ammonia gas cell with the IRCS spectrograph on the 8-m Subaru Telescope in order to obtain moderate-resolution spectra of exoplanets. They will then use these measurements to constrain models of planet formation. The team plans to make the cell available to US investigators, which will greatly aid in follow-up radial velocity studies for confirmation of exoplanet discoveries. Undergraduate students in be supervised and mentored in research, including observational and data reduction techniques.
This project focused on the identification and characterization of gas-giant planets around nearby M-dwarf stars with the radial velocity technique. Planets with masses between that of Neptune and Jupiter in our own solar system could have been detected around these stars. M-dwarfs are the dominant spectral type of stars in the solar neighborhood. Their low mass (only 10-50% of that of the sun) allows to identify very low mass planets. Nearby M-dwarfs are the prime targets for identifying the first Earth-like planet outside of our solar system. As M-dwarfs are colder and much fainter than the sun, these measurements need to be conducted at near infrared wavelengths. We have designed and commissioned special equipment to upgrade an existing near-infrared spectrograph at the 8.3m Subaru Telescope on top of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, to facilitate these measurements. A large multi-year observing campaign to find and characterize planets around a large number of target stars was the main objective of this project. Unfortunately, consistently bad weather during our observing runs did not allow us to gather enough data to answer the scientific questions raised in this project. We have, however, made our equipment available to the community to allow other researcher to use this unique instrument for this or similar science programs. We have furthermore trained two undergraduate students in the framework of this project. Both students have by now been accepted to graduate schools in the US and France.
