Stabilizing a Fabry–Perot Etalon Peak to 3 cm s-1for Spectrograph Calibration

We present a method of frequency stabilizing a broadband etalon that can serve as a high-precision wavelength calibrator for an echelle spectrograph. Using a laser to probe the Doppler-free saturated absorption of the rubidium D2 line, we stabilize one etalon transmission peak directly to the rubidium frequency. The rubidium transition is an established frequency standard and has been used to lock lasers to fractional stabilities of < 10-12, a level of accuracy far exceeding the demands of radial velocity (RV) searches for exoplanets. The stabilized bandwidth depends on the dispersion characteristics of the etalon. We describe a simple setup designed specifically for use at an observatory and demonstrate that we can stabilize the etalon peak to a relative precision of < 10-10; this is equivalent to 3 cm s-1 RV precision.