Group and phase delay sensing for cophasing large optical arrays

Abstract

The next generation of optical interferometers will provide high-resolution imaging of celestial objects by using either the aperture synthesis technique or the direct imaging principle. To determine the technical requirements, we have developed an interferometric test bench, called SIRIUS. To preserve the quality of the image, fast corrections of the optical path differences within a fraction of a wavelength have to be applied: this is the cophasing of the array, whereas making it coherent aims at stabilizing the optical path differences within a fraction of the coherence length. In the SIRIUS test bench, coherence and cophasing are achieved by fibred delay lines. Air delay lines are also used for the raw delay equalization. We present an original implementation of a piston sensor, called chromatic phase diversity, which is adaptable to any interferometer, whatever the configuration of the entrance pupil and the number of sub-pupils and whatever the interferometric combiner. Our method is based on the dispersed fringes principle and uses a derived version of the dispersed speckles method. The numerical simulation shows the performance of the method in terms of cophasing, accuracy and limiting magnitude. Experimental tests have been carried out both with optical turbulence and without. They show good results in both cases, despite some instrument-related limitations that can be eliminated. We show that our method is able to handle an amplitude of correction of ±11(λ/2) with an accuracy of ∼λ/30 over many minutes.