|
|||||
|
|
Unbalanced nulling interferometer and precise wavefront control |
|
| Authors: | Jun Nishikawa Naoshi Murakami |
| Affiliation: | 1. Division of Optical and Infrared Astronomy, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Mitaka, Tokyo, 181-8588, Japan 2. School of Physical Sciences, Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Mitaka, Tokyo, 181-8588, Japan 3. Division of Applied Physics, Faculty of Engineering, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, 060-8628, Japan 4. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, 91109, USA |
| Abstract: | A nulling interferometer was proposed to achieve direct detection of extra-solar planets (exoplanets) by suppressing light from the central star using a pair of telescopes. Recently, the stellar coronagraph method has shown rapid progress, which uses an extended concept of the nulling interferometer within single telescope optics. A dynamic range larger than 1 × 109 for the detection of Earth-like exoplanets can be attained by reducing diffraction patterns using the nulling coronagraph, and by suppressing speckle noise using an adaptive optics with an accuracy of λ/10000 rms. An unbalanced nulling interferometer (UNI), which is used as fore-optics, improves the wavefront sensing sensitivity and compensation level of the adaptive optics by a factor of 10. Consequently, the dynamic range of the coronagraph can also be improved by two orders of magnitude. The UNI is composed of a modified coronagraph or a traditional interferometer and magnifies the aberrations of incoming wavefronts. |
| Keywords: | |
| 本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录！ | |