Mieremet Arjan L, Braat Joseph J M
Optics Research Group, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.
Appl Opt. 2002 Aug 1;41(22):4697-703. doi: 10.1364/ao.41.004697.
In the infrared wavelength region, a typical star is approximately a million times brighter than the planet that surrounds it, which is a major problem when we attempt to detect exoplanets in a direct manner. Nulling interferometry is a technique that one can use to solve this problem by attenuating the stellar light and enhancing that of the planet. Generally, deep nulling is achieved by use of achromatic phase shifters (APSs). Unfortunately, the technology needed to build these APSs is not yet fully developed. We show that deep nulling can also be achieved by using delay lines only. We investigate the nulling depth as a function of the width of the wavelength interval and the number of telescopes. We also show that we can obtain nulling depths of less than 10(-6), which are required for exoplanet detection. Furthermore, we investigate the properties of the transmission map and make a comparison between our system and an APS system.
在红外波长区域，一颗典型的恒星比围绕它的行星亮约一百万倍，这在我们试图直接探测系外行星时是一个主要问题。消零干涉测量法是一种可用于通过衰减恒星光线并增强行星光线来解决此问题的技术。一般来说，深度消零是通过使用消色差移相器（APS）来实现的。不幸的是，制造这些APS所需的技术尚未完全发展成熟。我们表明，仅使用延迟线也可以实现深度消零。我们研究了消零深度与波长间隔宽度和望远镜数量的函数关系。我们还表明，我们可以获得小于10^(-6)的消零深度，这是探测系外行星所必需的。此外，我们研究了透射图的特性，并将我们的系统与APS系统进行了比较。
