Stabilizing a nulling interferometer at a nanometric level is the key issue to obtain deep null depths. The PERSEE breadboard has been designed to study and optimize the operation of a cophased nulling bench in the most realistic disturbing environment of a space mission. This presentation focuses on the current results of the PERSEE bench. In terms of metrology, we cophased at 0.33 nm rms for the piston and 80 mas rms for the tip/tilt (0.14% of the Airy disk). A Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) control coupled with an unsupervised vibration identification allows us to maintain that level of correction, even with characteristic vibrations of nulling interferometry space missions. These performances, with an accurate design and alignment of the bench, currently lead to a polychromatic unpolarised null depth of 8.9E-6 stabilized at 3E-7 on the [1.65-2.45] \mum spectral band (37% bandwidth).
@article{arxiv.1109.3131,
title = {Current results of the PERSEE testbench: the cophasing control and the polychromatic null rate},
author = {Julien Lozi and Frederic Cassaing and Jean-Michel Le Duigou and Beatrice Sorrente and Jospeh Montri and Jean-Michel Reess and Emilie Lhome and Tristan Buey and Francois Henault and Aurelie Marcotto and Paul Girard and Marc Barillot and Marc Ollivier and Vincent Coude du Foresto},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1109.3131},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
17 pages, 10 figures, proceedings of the Optics+Photonics SPIE conference, San Diego, 2011