Benchmark stars, benchmark spectrographs: Detailed spectroscopic comparison of ESPRESSO, PEPSI, and HARPS data for Gaia benchmark stars

Gaia benchmark stars are selected to be calibration stars for different spectroscopic surveys. Very high-quality and homogeneous spectroscopic data for these stars are therefore required. We collected ultrahigh-resolution ESPRESSO spectra for 30 of the 34 Gaia benchmark stars and made them public. We quantify the consistency of the results that are obtained with different high-, and ultrahigh-resolution spectrographs. We also comprehensively studied the effect of using different spectral reduction products of ESPRESSO on the final spectroscopic results. We used ultrahigh- and high-resolution spectra obtained with the ESPRESSO, PEPSI, and HARPS spectrographs to measure spectral line characteristics (line depth; line width; and EW) and determined stellar parameters and abundances for a subset of 11 Gaia benchmark stars. The EW spectral line measurements based on the ESPRESSO, PEPSI, and HARPS spectra agree to within a few percent. However, we note that the lines appear deeper in the ESPRESSO spectra than in PEPSI and HARPS. The stellar parameters derived from each spectrograph by combining the several available spectra agree well overall. We conclude that the ESPRESSO, PEPSI, and HARPS spectrographs can deliver spectroscopic results that are sufficiently consistent for most of the science cases in stellar spectroscopy.

 

Read more: Adibekyan et al. 2020, A&A, 642A, 182, in arXiv