Fibered nulling telescope for extra-solar coronagraphy.

A family of fibered nulling telescopes is described, based on the joint use of several recent suggested or demonstrated techniques, namely, pupil densification, multiaxial recombination and single-mode fiber modal filtering, and the use of a fully symmetric beam splitter arrangement. The concept seems appropriate for the realization of a spaceborne nulling telescope, searching for Jupiter-like extra-solar planets and a precursor of future missions, such as Darwin or terrestrial planet finder interferometer (TPF-I). However, it is generally not possible to satisfy at the same time two major requirements, being the depth and size of the central nulling area, and the global throughput for the observed planet.