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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - LITHIUM (From planetary birth with aperture masking interferometry to nulling with Lithium Niobate technology)

Teaser

Summary

Understanding the formation of our Earth pass by looking at other exoplanets, and understanding how they formed. It is indeed a technological challenge, since exoplanets are extremely faint compared to their host star. And that difficultly adds to difficulty to observe planets at commensurable distance.
But on an optimist note, this led to many promising technological developments, like extreme adaptive optics or coronagraphs. This project tends to develop and upgrade two specific technologies: aperture masking and single mode filtering. With time, single mode filtering has also emerged to be a key technique for spatial observation.
The maturation of this technique has led us to the design of the PicSat satellite. It is the first major realisation of this ERC. Scheduled for launch beginning of 2018, it will, hopefully, provide us with unique data to better understand planetary formation.

Work performed

The main objectif of this project is a better understanding of how planets form. To achieve this objective, the DoA was split into 4 work packages:
- The first work package consists in using existing facilities to gather more data using the technique called â€œaperture maskingâ€. We used the NACO, GPI, and SPHERE instrument to get more data on several young debris disk targets. We looked for existing planets, but we could not find one. We also note that the combination of aperture masking data and mid-infrared data are excellent to better characterise the properties of planetary disks. This was emphasized on the young object IRS48 by lead author G. Schworer.
- We have commissioned the aperture mask for the SPHERE instrument. It is now available to the full astronomical community
- We also worked with the IXBLue company and the TeemPhotonics company to develop new type of instruments which shall have superior accuracy compare to traditional aperture masking. The test instrument, called FIRST, is under completion, and use special monomode fibers to filter the light and reach unprecedented accuracy. We plan to deliver for test at the SUBARU telescope in June 2018.
- Last, we have put a lot of efforts to benefit from the incoming transit of young planet Beta Pictoris b. It is an opportunity which only happens each 18 years. It would allow us to confront for the first time formation models with observations. Beta Pictoris b is specific because of its young age, its proximity to our stellar system, and its almost 90Â° inclination. We have used the technique that we developed for FIRST to miniaturise a detection system within the space available by a 3U CubeSat.

Final results

The most notable advance of the project comes from the technology developed in WP3, which is then re-used for the space telescope called PicSat. The PicSat satellite is the first CubeSat for exoplanetary science. This is thanks to a revolutionary technical advance in fiber optics and pointing stability.
The accuracy is so good that we are currently thinking of extending the technique to other scientific area, like fiber communication in space. A patent is currently under investigation, as well as a partnership with a private company.