Star-Light Suppression with a rotating Rotational-Shearing Interferometer for Extra-Solar Planet Detection

Abstract

Star light, scattered from even most smoothly polished optical surfaces, prevents detection of a faint planet light because of the enormous brightness ratio between them. Figure 1 shows two point sources: a dark (Earth-like) planet rotates slowly around a bright star. At the time of observation the planet is assumed to be on x-axis. The wavefronts originating from the star and the planet, respectively, are incident on the aperture at a distant observation plane as plane waves with the propagation vector parallel to the optical axis and tilted with the direction cosine vector (1, 0, n).