Abstract

We present the results of simulations on the detectability of O2 in the atmosphere of Earth twins around nearby low mass stars using high resolution transmission spectroscopy. We explore such detectability with each of the three upcoming Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs), i.e. GMT, TMT and E-ELT, and high resolution spectrographs, assuming such instruments will be available in all ELTs. With these simulations we extend previous studies by taking into account atmospheric refraction in the transmission spectrum of the exo-Earth and observational white and red noise contributions. We find that, unless unpredicted instrumental limitations arise, the implementation of pre-slit optics such as image slicers appear to be key to significantly improve the yield of this particular science case.

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