Laboratory performance of the Keck Interferometer nulling beam combiner

Details Laboratory performance of the Keck Interferometer nulling beam combiner Laboratory performance of the Keck Interferometer nulling beam combiner

Oct 2003

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003esasp.539..525m&link_type=abstract

In: Proceedings of the Conference on Towards Other Earths: DARWIN/TPF and the Search for Extrasolar Terrestrial Planets, 22-25 A

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3

Nulling, Interferometry, Mid-Infrared

Scientific paper

Now that regular visibility squared measurements are routinely achieved, mid-infrared nulling is the next observing mode to be implemented on the Keck Interferometer (KI). This mode's main objective is the characterization of exo-zodiacal dust disks around nearby main sequence stars (Kuchner & Serabyn, 2003) in support of the TPF space mission. Keck Nuller also shares numerous characteristics with an interferometric TPF, and will then serve as a technical precursor for this mission. We report here the results obtained in the laboratory with the KI mid-IR nulling beam combiner, which is based on a dual polarization Modified Mach Zender (MMZ) combiner (Serabyn & Colavita, 2001), and dispersion compensation and achromatic nulling through zinc-selenide (ZnSe) dielectric plates (Koresko et al., 2002). Best broad-band dual polarization transient rejection levels obtained so far on thermal sources range from 7500:1 over a 29% bandwidth (FWHM from 9.20 to 12.35 microns) to 17000:1 with an 18% bandwidth (FWHM from 9.70 to 11.65 microns). These rejections are basically one order of magnitude better than the limit set by the stellar finite angular size, which is about 1000:1 at 10 microns for a 1 mas diameter star observed with KI 80m baseline. These results then validate the optical concept chosen for the nulling back-end, which now needs to be properly integrated with the mid-IR nulling camera and the KI beam train.

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