Asgard/NOTT is an ERC-funded project hosted at KU Leuven and is part of a new visitor instrumental suite, called Asgard, under preparation for the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). Leveraging nulling capabilities and the long VLTI baselines, it is optimized for high-contrast imaging of the snow line region around young nearby main-sequence stars. This will enable the characterization of the atmosphere of young giant exoplanets and warm/hot exozodiacal dust with spectroscopy in the L'-band (3.5-4.0μm). In this work, we present the first lab assembly of the instrument done at KU Leuven and the technical solutions to tackle the challenge of performing nulling in the mid-infrared despite the thermal background. The opto-mechanical design of the warm optics and the injection system for the photonic chip are described. The alignment procedure used to assemble the system is also presented. Finally, the first experimental results, including fringes and null measurements, are given and confirm the adequacy of the bench to test and optimize the Asgard/NOTT instrument.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2407.08557,
title = {Asgard/NOTT: First lab assembly and experimental results},
author = {G. Garreau and A. Bigioli and R. Laugier and B. La Torre and M-A. Martinod and K. Missiaen and J. Morren and G. Raskin and M. Salman and S. Gross and M. Ireland and A. P. Joó and L. Labadie and S. Madden and A. Mazzoli and G. Medgyesi and A. Sanny and A. Taras and B. Vandenbussche and D. Defrère},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.08557},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
13 pages (incl. 14 figures); Proc. SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2024 (Yokohama; Japan), Optical and Infrared Interferometry and Imaging IX