Precision of The Chinese Space Station Telescope (CSST) Stellar Radial Velocities

TL;DR

The paper evaluates the Chinese Space Station Telescope's ability to measure stellar radial velocities with high precision, analyzing factors affecting accuracy and potential scientific applications.

Contribution

It provides an empirical assessment of CSST's radial velocity measurement capabilities across different stellar types and observational conditions.

Findings

Achieves ~3 km/s precision for AFGKM stars at SNR 100

Achieves ~10 km/s precision for OB stars at SNR 100

GU band performs best for velocity measurements

Abstract

The Chinese Space Station Telescope (CSST) spectroscopic survey plans to deliver high-quality low-resolution ($R > 200$) slitless spectra for hundreds of millions of targets down to a limiting magnitude of about 21 mag, covering a large survey area (17500 deg$^2$) and a wide wavelength range (255-1000 nm by 3 bands GU, GV, and GI). In this work, we use empirical spectra of the Next Generation Spectral Library to simulate the CSST stellar spectra at $R = 250$, and investigate their capabilities in measuring radial velocities. We find that velocity uncertainties depend strongly on effective temperature, weakly on metallicity for only FGK stars, and hardly on surface gravity. It is possible to deliver stellar radial velocities to a precision of about $3 \,\mathrm{km}\,\mathrm{s}^{-1}$ for AFGKM stars, and about $10 \,\mathrm{km}\,\mathrm{s}^{-1}$ for OB stars, at signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 100. Velocity uncertainties using single GU/GV/GI band spectra are also explored. Given the same SNR, the GU band performs best, the GV band the second best, and then the GI band. The effects of spectral normalization and imperfect template on velocity measurements are investigated and found to be very weak. The uncertainties caused by wavelength calibration are considered and found to be moderate. Given the possible precision of radial velocities, the CSST spectroscopic survey can enable interesting science such as searching for hyper-velocity stars. Limitations of our results are also discussed.