Rotational-Shearing-Interferometer Response for a Star-Planet System without Star Cancellation

Abstract

The Rotational Shearing Interforometer has been proposed for direct detection of extra-solar planets. This interferometer cancels the star radiation using destructive interference. However, the resulting signal is too small (few photons/s for each m2). We propose a novel method to enhance the signal magnitude by means of the star–planet interference when the star radiation is not cancelled. We use interferograms computationally simulated to confirm the viability of the technique.

Keywords

• interferometry
• remote sensing
• computational simulation