New polychromatic testbed for DARWIN/TPF nulling interferometer laboratory demonstration

Several concept of space missions dedicated to the direct detection and analysis of extrasolar planets are based on nulling interferometry principle. This principle, which is theoretically very promising requires the capability of propagating and combining beams with very high accuracy in term of amplitude phase and polarization. In order to validate the principle of nulling interferometry, it is necessary to develop laboratory techniques of recombination. In this paper, we present a new test bench that should allow measuring rejection rate up to 105 in a large spectral band between 2 and 4 microns.© (2003) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.