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Stabilization of calibration light sources for high Accuracy Photometry Instruments provisório

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Calibration light sources for high accuracy photometry instruments
Publication . Pereira, Cédric P.; Abreu, Manuel Adler Sanchez de; Cabral, Alexandre
The exoplanet field is a scientific area that has been growing with exciting discoveries every year. More and more missions are emerging, and their complexity has been increasing. The latest instruments are designed to operate with extreme precision and stability, allowing the detection of smaller exoplanets and the characterisation of these other worlds. The fast evolution of this field constantly requires new technology and new strategies to meet its scientific objectives. Many of these missions use observation techniques based on the transit method, including photometers and spectrometers in their instruments. To successfully use these techniques, it is necessary to mitigate different sources of noise and systematic errors caused by effects such as pointing jitter, thermal and optomechanical stability, wavelength and photometric calibration, detector stability, among others. Therefore, it is essential to characterise the impact of these noise sources on the instruments and, consequently, on the critical calibration of scientific data. The characterisation of high accuracy photometers requires a calibration system in which the main component is a light source. The photometric stability of this light source, both in flux and spectra, must be better than the goal stability of the photometer to be tested. This thesis aims to research and develop an on-ground method capable of characterising and calibrating space-based instruments (with a particular focus on high accuracy photometers). It must be able to achieve state-of-the-art stability, allowing it to be integrated into the most modern exoplanet space missions, a truly impressive challenge when stabilisation levels of few parts-per-million (ppm) are required up to several hours of observation. The future ARIEL space mission is here considered as a reference, defining the top-level requirements of a high accuracy photometric instrument: a challenging target photometric precision/stability of 20 ppm to 100 ppm, over a 10 hour observation period.

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Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia

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Funding Award Number

PD/BD/150443/2019

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