Nulling interferometry at mid-infrared wavelengths holds promise for finding and characterizing Earth-like planets that orbit nearby stars. By strongly suppressing light from a nearby star, the instrument becomes sensitive enough for direct detection of planets orbiting that star. A compound nulling interferometer (combining light from more than 2 telescopes) is needed for these searches, in order to achieve adequate light suppression across the full disk of the star. We present an error analysis of quasi-static and chopping variants of a four element nulling interferometer, including the dependence on amplitude, delay, baseline length, and telescope pointing errors.

Date Published: 26 February 2003
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 4852, Interferometry in Space, (26 February 2003);

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4852:
Interferometry in Space
Michael Shao, Editor(s)