Meredith L. Rawls edited Radial Velocities.tex  almost 9 years ago

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We use a PHOENIX BT-Settl model atmosphere spectrum as a BF template \citep{all03}. This particular model uses \citet{Asplund_2009} solar abundance values for a star with $T_{\rm{eff}} = 4800$ K, $\log g = 2.5$, and solar metallicity. Since the BF handles line broadening between template and target robustly, we do not adjust the resolution of the template. For comparison, we test the BF with an observation of Arcturus as a template, and find the peaks are narrower and have larger amplitudes. These qualities may be essential to measure RVs in the situation where a companion star is extremely faint, but the RVs of both stars in KIC 9246715 appear with similar strength, so we choose a model atmosphere template for simplicity. Specifically, using a model avoids inconsistencies between the optical and IR regime, additional barycentric corrections, spurious telluric line peaks, and uncertainties from a template star's systemic RV. However, the advantages of using a real star spectrum as a BF template instead of a model will likely be crucial for future work, as most other RG/EBs are composed of a bright RG and relatively faint main sequence companion.  For the optical spectra we consider the wavelength range 5400--6700 \AA. This region is chosen because it has a high signal-to-noise ratio and minimal telluric features. For the near-IR APOGEE spectra, we consider the wavelength range 15150--16950 \AA. We smooth the BF with a Gaussian to remove un-correlated, small-scale noise below the size of the spectrograph slit, and then fit Gaussian profiles to measure the location of the BF peaks in velocity space. The geocentric (uncorrected) results from the BF technique are shown for the optical spectra in Figure \ref{fig:bffig}. The results look similar for the near-IR spectra. The final derived radial velocity curve points  with barycentric corrections is shown are presented  in Table \ref{table0} and  Figure \ref{fig:rvfig}. \subsection{Comparison with TODCOR}\label{todcor}  To confirm that the BF-extracted radial velocities are accurate, we also use TODCOR \citep{zuc94} to extract radial velocities for the TRES spectra. TODCOR, which stands for two-dimensional cross-correlation, uses a template spectrum from a library with a narrow spectral range (5050--5350 \AA) to make a two-component radial velocity curve for spectroscopic binaries. It is commonly used with TRES spectra for eclipsing binary studies. From the radial velocity curve, TODCOR subsequently calculates an orbital solution. We use the full TODCOR RV extractor + orbital solution calculator for the TRES spectra, and compare this with the TODCOR orbital solution calculator for the combined ARCES, TRES, and APOGEE RV points which were extracted with the BF technique. We find that the two orbital solutions are in excellent agreement. ( PATRICK COMMENT: NEED TO SPECIFICALLY MENTION THE AVERAGE DISCREAPANCY BETWEEN BOTH METHODS, AS THE STD DEVIATION OF THE RV(BF)-RV(TODCOR) ) The TODCOR RVs are on average $0.22 \pm 0.25 \ \rm{km \ s}^{-1}$ lower than the BF RVs, which we attribute to a negligible difference in RV zeropoint.