Broadband phase and intensity compensation with a deformable mirror for an interferometric nuller

Nulling interferometry has been proposed for the direct detection of Earth-like planets. Deep stable nulls require careful control of the relative intensity and phase of the beams that are being combined. We present a novel compensator, the Adaptive Nuller, that corrects the intensity and phase as a function of wavelength from 8 to 12 μm using a deformable mirror. This compensator has been used to produce rejection ratios of 82000 : 1 over a bandwidth of 3.2 μm centered around 10 μm.