CODEX-ESPRESSO

A group of Astronomers and Astrophysicists, calling themselves The CODEX Team recently proposed an experiment to test fundamental physics. they write:

"Difficult as it may be, such an experiment is no more complex, nor more expensive, nor of less fundamental importance than what our colleagues at CERN regularly do.

Accuracies not far from what we need for detecting the cosmic signal are presently being reached in the observations of radial velocity perturbations induced by extra-solar planets (e.g. HARPS [6]). We want to do the same but with objects that are hundred thousand times fainter than the extra-solar planets targets, and on timescales of decades. An extremely large light bucket is needed and in this respect the E-ELT is going to play for European astronomers the role of LHC for particle physicists."

About the feasibility of the Experiment they write:

"A special issue is represented by the wavelength calibration, because long-term stability is a must and serious doubts have been cast over the possibility to achieve the required accuracy with conventional lamps. This is the reason why a new concept is being developed: the laser frequency comb, an optical or near-IR laser generating a train of femtosecond pulses with the pulse repetition controlled by an atomic clock, producing a reference spectrum of evenly spaced δ functions [8]"


Some of them are in Geneva where CERN is, and were the first to discover planets outside our solar system going around a normal star like our Sun. We should pay attention.

They conclude:

"Is the leap from HARPS on the ESO 3.6m telescope in La Silla to the E-ELT too daring? Maybe. This has prompted the CODEX Team to study the possibility of building a precursor, dubbed ESPRESSO (Echelle Spectrograph for PREcision Super Stable Observations) to be placed at the VLT, possibly at the incoherently combined focus of the four UTs. The instrument would look like one CODEX module and would allow the community to get a first glance of a significant part of the CODEX immediate science, of course with the exception of the cosmic dynamics. ESPRESSO would make it possible tests of the stability of the IGM that on the one hand are crucial for the CODEX feasibility and on the other hand would provide fundamental information on the formation of cosmic structures and feedback at high-redshift (see, for example [12])."

Astroparticle Physics to Particle Physics, here we come!