Optimal beam combiner design for nulling interferometers

Abstract

A scheme to optimally design a beam combiner is discussed for any pre-determined fixed geometry nulling interferometer aimed at detection and characterization of exoplanets with multiple telescopes or a single telescope (aperture masking). We show that considerably higher order nulls can be achieved with 1-D interferometer geometries than possible with 2-D geometries with the same number of apertures. Any 1-D interferometer with N apertures can achieve a 2(N-1)-order null, while the order of the deepest null for a random 2-D aperture geometry interferometer is the order of the N-th term in the Taylor expansion of e^{i(x^2+y^2)} around x=0, y=0 (2nd order null for N=2,3; 4th order null for N=4,5,6). We also show that an optimal beam combiner for nulling interferometry relies only 0 or Pi phase shifts. Examples of nulling interferometer designs are shown to illustrate these findings.

14 page, 8 figures, Submitted to PASP

References in corpus (4)

• Theoretical Limits on Extrasolar Terrestrial Planet Detection with Coronagraphs
• DARWIN - A Mission to Detect, and Search for Life on, Extrasolar Planets
• Nulling interferometry: impact of exozodiacal clouds on the performance of future life-finding space missions
• A Nulling Wide Field Imager for Exoplanets Detection and General Astrophysics

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• Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE): VII. Practical implementation of a five-telescope kernel-nulling beam combiner with a discussion on instrumental uncertainties and redundancy benefits
• High-contrast detection of exoplanets with a kernel-nuller at the VLTI
• Consequences of Non-Gaussian Instrumental Noise in Perturbed Nulling Interferometers
• Robust Data Interpretation for Perturbed Nulling Interferometers via Proper Handling of Correlated Errors