Development of a statistical reduction method for the Palomar Fiber Nuller
Abstract
A unique statistical data analysis method has been developed for reducing nulling interferometry data. The idea is to make use of the statistical distributions of the fluctuating null depths and beam intensities to retrieve the astrophysical null depth in the presence of fluctuations. The approach yields an accuracy much better than is possible with standard data reduction methods, because the accuracy of the null depth is not limited by the sizes of the phase and intensity errors but by the uncertainties on their statistical distributions. The result is an improvement in the instrumental null depth measurement limit of roughly an order of magnitude. We show in this paper that broadband null depths of 10^(-4) can be measured in the lab with our infrared Fiber Nuller without achromatic phase shifters. On sky results are also dramatically improved, with measured contrasts up to a couple of 10^(-4) with our instrument mounted on the Hale telescope at the Palomar Observatory. This statistical analysis is not specific to our instrument and may be applicable to other interferometers.
Additional Information
© 2010 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). July 21, 2010. This work was carried out at the Jet propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The research was supported by the Fond National de la Recherche scientifique de Belgique (FNRS), by the Fonds pour la formation à la Recherche dans l'Industrie et dans l'Agriculture de Belgique (FRIA) and by the Communauté Francaise de Belgique - Action de recherche concertée - Académie Wallonie - Europe and by the Center for Exoplanet Science.Attached Files
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 57812
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20150526-130111425
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- Fond National de la Recherche scientifique de Belgique (FNRS)
- Fonds pour la formation à la Recherche dans l'Industrie et dans l'Agriculture de Belgique (FRIA)
- Communauté Francaise de Belgique-Action de recherche concertée-Académie Wallonie-Europe
- Center for Exoplanet Science
- Created
-
2015-05-26Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Series Name
- Proceedings of SPIE
- Series Volume or Issue Number
- 7734