Publications of the MPIfR
Optical & Infrared
Interferometry Group
Nishikawa, J., Murakami, N., Abe, L.,
Kotani, T., Tamura, M., Yokochi, K., Kurokawa, T.
Nulling and adaptive optics for very high
dynamic range coronagraph
Space Telescopes and Instrumentation I: Optical,
Infrared, and Millimeter.
Edited by Mather, John C.; MacEwen, Howard A.; de Graauw, Mattheus W.
M..
Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 6265, pp.62653Q(1-5)
Abstract
We have started demonstrating a technique for high dynamic range
observations in the lab. This method, proposed by Nishikawa et al.,
combines a nulling interferometer, a wavefront compensator, and a
coronagraph. In the experiments, two beams are generated by a beam
splitter and they are combined by another beam splitter under an
intensity-unbalanced nulling condition. After the unbalanced nulling
interferometer (UNI), normal wavefront sensor and two deformable
mirrors are applied for phase and amplitude correction (PAC). Wavefront
errors of the two original beams, large errors after the UNI, and
compensated errors after the PAC by the deformable mirrors will be
measured. After the UNI-PAC method is applied, a downstream coronagraph
optics will be set to see that the peak intensity of the central star
is dimmed and speckle noise level is also reduced relative to off-axis
planet intensity. Possible applications of the method are also
discussed.
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