7 research outputs found
Interferometric coronography for the DARWIN space mission - Laboratory demonstration experiment
No full textThe DARWIN mission aims at directly detecting exoplanets, particularly telluric ones, around nearby stars
and at performing a spectral analysis of their potential atmosphere.
The major difficulty in achieving this goal is the huge luminosity
contrast between the star and its possible planet(s). The mission concept is
based on the star light rejection by nulling interferometry. This concept has
never been experimentally demonstrated with high values of rejection (105)
in the thermal infrared where DARWIN will observe.
In this paper, we describe a laboratory test-bed
that uses a CO2 laser at 10.6 ÎĽm to achieve this goal in a monochromatic case.
We describe its principle, its
sub-systems, their realizations and the first results we obtained with this interferometer
