We demonstrate the ability to measure precise stellar barycentric radial
velocities with the dispersed fixed-delay interferometer technique using the
Exoplanet Tracker (ET), an instrument primarily designed for precision
differential Doppler velocity measurements using this technique. Our
barycentric radial velocities, derived from observations taken at the KPNO 2.1
meter telescope, differ from those of Nidever et al. by 0.047 km/s (rms) when
simultaneous iodine calibration is used, and by 0.120 km/s (rms) without
simultaneous iodine calibration. Our results effectively show that a Michelson
interferometer coupled to a spectrograph allows precise measurements of
barycentric radial velocities even at a modest spectral resolution of R ~ 5100.
A multi-object version of the ET instrument capable of observing ~500 stars per
night is being used at the Sloan 2.5 m telescope at Apache Point Observatory
for the Multi-object APO Radial Velocity Exoplanet Large-area Survey (MARVELS),
a wide-field radial velocity survey for extrasolar planets around TYCHO-2 stars
in the magnitude range 7.6<V<12. In addition to precise differential
velocities, this survey will also yield precise barycentric radial velocities
for many thousands of stars using the data analysis techniques reported here.
Such a large kinematic survey at high velocity precision will be useful in
identifying the signature of accretion events in the Milky Way and
understanding local stellar kinematics in addition to discovering exoplanets,
brown dwarfs and spectroscopic binaries.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap