Combination of nulling interferometer, nulling coronagraph, and modified pupil method

Abstract

We investigated two-stage combinations from three methods, nulling interferometer, nulling coronagraph, and modified pupil, calculating reduced intensity profile of a resolved central star and transmission for exo-planets. An achievable dynamic range can be derived by dividing the residual halo intensity of the star by the transmitted peak intensity of the planet. For observation parameters, here assumed are the wavelength of 600 nm in optical and the telescope diameter of 3 m. The combination of the nulling interferometer and the four-quadrant phase mask coronagraph showed the best performance reaching to $10^{-10}$ dynamic range at 100mas distance from the central star among five candidates of combination using nulling interferometer, achromatic interfero-coronagraph, four-quadrant phase mask, and shaped pupil method.