DARWIN nulling interferometer breadboard II: design and manufacturing
conference paper
Nulling interferometry is a direct method to detect earth-like planets. To determine whether a planet is earth-like spectrometry can be performed which requires a broadband optical input signal from the planet. Nulling interferometry should decrease the broadband (λ ≈ 6-18μm) star signal by about a factor of 106. For an ESA contract a nulling interferometer breadboard has been designed, manufactured and tested by TNO TPD together with and as subcontractor of Astrium GmbH in Germany. The set-up enables testing of two different phase shifter types (dispersive phase shifting and field reversal), two different star/planet simulator designs and consists of three sources, a star source, a planet source and a control source. The optical path difference is actively stabilized using an adaptive control scheme and a piezo activated cat's-eye delay-line. The bandwidth of one star source equals 1550 ± 15nm. First tests with this source at TNO TPD resulted in an optical path length stability of 0.5nm rms and a stable, repeatable nulling depth of 30000 (3.3·10-5).
Topics
TNO Identifier
237018
ISSN
03796566
Source title
Proceedings of the Conference Towards Other Earths: DARWIN/TPF and the Search for Extrasolar Terrestrial Planets, 22-25 April 2003, Heidelberg, Germany
Editor(s)
Fridlund, M.
Henning, T.
Henning, T.
Collation
5 p.
Pages
641-645
Files
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