Events in Physics
Ignasi Ribas (Institut de Ciencies de l'Espai)
The CARMENES instrument: finding small planets signals amid astrophysical noise
Just two decades after the first discoveries of planets outside our Solar System, we now count over 1000 exoplanets and have been able to investigate some of their atmospheric properties. With the ever-improving technical capabilities, the possibility of finding hot and massive planets has extended to smaller planets (terrestrial) with mild surface temperatures (habitable). The observation of M-type stars is a “fast track” method to discover, and possibly characterise, hot and temperate rocky exoplanets. The CARMENES spectrograph, with its two channels covering from the visibe to the near-IR, is ideally suited for the job. CARMENES will survey a sample of 300 M dwarfs (with special emphasis on mid- and late-Ms) in search for planets as small as a few
Earth masses within the habitable zone of their stars. Besides the technological challenge of obtaining m/s precision in the NIR, the project faces also the problem of having to deal with stars that can be intrinsically active. In this talk I will present the CARMENES instrument, including both the science case and the current development status. In addition, I will discuss our efforts in trying to understand the impact of stellar magnetic activity on radial velocities and possible ways to mitigate its effects.