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Paper: NIRSPEC Radial Velocity Measurements of Late-M Dwarfs
Volume: 448, 16th Cambridge Workshop on Cool Stars, Stellar Systems, and the Sun
Page: 961
Authors: Tanner, A.; White, R.; Bailey, J.; Barman, T.
Abstract: With an emphasis in detecting Earth-like planets set forth by the 2010 Decadal Survey and in searching for planets around M dwarfs set forth by the 2008 Exoplanet Task Force, radial velocity surveys with infrared echelle spectrometers will have a significant impact on future exoplanet studies. Here, we present the results of an infrared radial velocity survey of a sample of 15 late-M dwarfs with the NIRSPEC echelle spectrometer on the Keck II telescope. Using telluric lines for wavelength calibration, we are able to achieve measurement precisions of 150–300 m/s over a year-long timeframe. While we require more RV epochs to determine whether most of our stars have planetary-mass companions, we have placed upper limits of 5–10 MJ on the masses of planets around a sub-set of our sample. We have also determined the rotational velocities for all the stars in the sample and offer our multi-order, high-resolution spectra over 2.0 to 2.4 μm to the modeling community to better understand the atmospheres of late-M dwarfs.
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