Related papers: Calibrating an Interferometric Null
The wavelength calibration of spectrographs is an essential but challenging task in many disciplines. Calibration is traditionally accomplished by imaging the spectrum of a light source containing features that are known to appear at…
Due to their extremely small luminosity compared to the stars they orbit, planets outside our own Solar System are extraordinarily difficult to detect directly in optical light. Careful photometric monitoring of distant stars, however, can…
Differential phase observations with a near-IR interferometer offer a way to obtain spectra of extrasolar planets. The method makes use of the wavelength dependence of the interferometer phase of the planet/star system, which depends both…
The direct observation of cold and temperate planets within 1 to 10 AU would be extremely valuable for uncovering their atmospheric compositions but remains a formidable challenge with current astronomical methods. Ground-based optical…
Imaging the planets that orbit around other stars requires blocking the host star which is usually 8-10 orders of magnitude brighter than the planets. This is achieved with the help of a stellar coronagraph. In the current work, a concept…
I present a review of astrometric techniques and instrumentation utilized to search for, detect, and characterize extra-solar planets. First, I briefly summarize the properties of the present-day sample of extrasolar planets, in connection…
Interferometric calibration always yields non unique solutions. It is therefore essential to remove these ambiguities before the solutions could be used in any further modeling of the sky, the instrument or propagation effects such as the…
The next generation of high-contrast imaging instruments will provide the first unresolved image of an extrasolar planet. While the emitted infrared light from the planet in thermal equilibrium should show almost no phase effect, the…
Interferometric photon-correlation measurements, which correspond to the second-order intensity cross-correlations between the two output ports of an unbalanced Michelson interferometer, are sensitive to both amplitude and phase…
The techniques of laser cooling combined with atom interferometry make possible the realization of very sensitive and accurate inertial sensors like gyroscopes or accelerometers. Besides earth-based developments, the use of these techniques…
The characterisation of exoplanets is critical to understanding planet diversity and formation, their atmospheric composition and the potential for life. This endeavour is greatly enhanced when light from the planet can be spatially…
High-contrast imaging from space must overcome two major noise sources to successfully detect a terrestrial planet angularly close to its parent star: photon noise from diffracted star light, and speckle noise from star light scattered by…
The most successful method used so far to search for extrasolar planets is the radial velocity technique, where periodical shifts on the measured emission from a star provide evidence for an orbiting planet. This method has been used on…
A crucial challenge to the scaling up of linear optical interferometers is the presence of defective optical components resulting from inevitable imperfections in fabrication and packaging. This work presents a method for circumventing such…
In this paper are discussed the nulling and imaging properties of monolithic pupil telescopes equipped with a focal plane waveguide array, which could be envisaged as precursor space missions for future nulling interferometers or…
Baseline calibration of a stellar interferometer is a prerequisite to data reduction of astrometric operations. This technique of astrometry is triangulation of star positions. Since angles are deduced from the baseline and delay side of…
Existing Electric Field Conjugation (EFC) methods are not suited for treating small polarization effects, referred to here as cross polarization. EFC utilizes a deformable mirror (DM) to nullify the electric fields from the host star within…
Planets reflect and linearly polarize the radiation that they receive from their host stars. The emergent polarization is sensitive to aspects of the planet atmosphere such as the gas composition and the occurrence of condensates and their…
Microlensing is the most promising method to study the statistical frequency of extra-solar planets orbiting typical (random) stars in the Milky Way, even those several kiloparsecs from Earth. The lensing zone corresponds to orbital…
Among various techniques to search for extra-solar planets, microlensing has some unique characteristics. Contrary to all other methods which favour nearby objects, microlensing is sensitive to planets around stars at distances of several…