Kernel-Phase in Fizeau Inteferometry

Abstract

The detection of high contrast companions at small angular separation appears feasible in conventional direct images using the self-calibration properties of interferometric observable quantities. The friendly notion of closure-phase, which is key to the recent observational successes of non-redundant aperture masking interferometry used with Adaptive Optics, appears to be one example of a wide family of observable quantities that are not contaminated by phase-noise. In the high-Strehl regime, soon to be available thanks to the coming generation of extreme Adaptive Optics systems on ground based telescopes, and already available from space, closure-phase like information can be extracted from any direct image, even taken with a redundant aperture. These new phase-noise immune observable quantities, called kernel-phases, are determined a-priori from the knowledge of the geometry of the pupil only. Re-analysis of archive data acquired with the Hubble Space Telescope NICMOS instrument, using this new kernel-phase algorithm demonstrates the power of the method as it clearly detects and locates with milli-arcsecond precision a known companion to a star at angular separation less than the diffraction limit.