Design of a polarization nulling interferometer for exoplanet detection

We present the design of a new testbed experiment to demonstrate nulling interferometry using polarization properties. This three-beam set-up is perfectly symmetric with respect to the number of reflections and transmissions and should therefore allow a high rejection ratio in a wide spectral band.

Compensation and optimization of dispersion in nulling interferometry

The optical properties of materials are wavelength-dependent. This property, called dispersion, affects the performance of a wide-band nulling interferometer by inducing wavelength-dependent phase differences between the arms of the interferometer. In this paper, we analyze the influence of dispersion in nulling interferometers for exoplanet...