TY - JOUR
T1 - First on-sky demonstration of an integrated-photonic nulling interferometer
T2 - The GLINT instrument
AU - Norris, Barnaby R.M.
AU - Cvetojevic, Nick
AU - Lagadec, Tiphaine
AU - Jovanovic, Nemanja
AU - Gross, Simon
AU - Arriola, Alexander
AU - Gretzinger, Thomas
AU - Martinod, Marc Antoine
AU - Guyon, Olivier
AU - Lozi, Julien
AU - Withford, Michael J.
AU - Lawrence, Jon S.
AU - Tuthill, Peter
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project DP180103413. It was performed in part at the OptoFab node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility utilizing Commonwealth as well as NSW state government funding. SG acknowledges funding through a Macquarie University Research Fellowship (9201300682) and the Australian Research Council Discovery Programme (DE160100714). NC acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement CoG – 683029). The authors acknowledge support from the JSPS (Grant-in-Aid for Research #23340051, #26220704, and #23103002). This work was supported by the Astrobiology Center (ABC) of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences, Japan and the
Funding Information:
directors contingency fund at the Subaru Telescope. This research was also supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (project number CE110001018). The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 The Author(s)
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - The characterization 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 separated from that of the host star. One potential method is nulling interferometry, where the contaminating starlight is removed via destructive interference. The GLINT instrument is a photonic nulling interferometer with novel capabilities that has now been demonstrated in on-sky testing. The instrument fragments the telescope pupil into sub-apertures that are injected into waveguides within a single-mode photonic chip. Here, all requisite beam splitting, routing, and recombination are performed using integrated photonic components. We describe the design, construction, and laboratory testing of our GLINT pathfinder instrument. We then demonstrate the efficacy of this method on sky at the Subaru Telescope, achieving a null-depth precision on sky of ∼10−4 and successfully determining the angular diameter of stars (via their null-depth measurements) to milliarcsecond accuracy. A statistical method for analysing such data is described, along with an outline of the next steps required to deploy this technique for cutting-edge science.
AB - The characterization 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 separated from that of the host star. One potential method is nulling interferometry, where the contaminating starlight is removed via destructive interference. The GLINT instrument is a photonic nulling interferometer with novel capabilities that has now been demonstrated in on-sky testing. The instrument fragments the telescope pupil into sub-apertures that are injected into waveguides within a single-mode photonic chip. Here, all requisite beam splitting, routing, and recombination are performed using integrated photonic components. We describe the design, construction, and laboratory testing of our GLINT pathfinder instrument. We then demonstrate the efficacy of this method on sky at the Subaru Telescope, achieving a null-depth precision on sky of ∼10−4 and successfully determining the angular diameter of stars (via their null-depth measurements) to milliarcsecond accuracy. A statistical method for analysing such data is described, along with an outline of the next steps required to deploy this technique for cutting-edge science.
KW - Instrumentation: high angular resolution
KW - Instrumentation: interferometers
KW - Methods: data analysis
KW - Planets
KW - Satellites: detection
KW - Techniques: high angular resolution
KW - Techniques: interferometric
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U2 - 10.1093/MNRAS/STZ3277
DO - 10.1093/MNRAS/STZ3277
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85102125893
VL - 491
SP - 4180
EP - 4193
JO - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
JF - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
SN - 0035-8711
IS - 3
ER -