Planet Formation Imager: project update

John Monnier (1) , Stefan Kraus (2) , Amy Bonsor (3) , Fabien Baron (4) , Jean-Philippe Berger , Tabetha Boyajian , Andrea Chiavassa (5) , David Ciardi , Willem-Jan de Wit (6) , Ruobing Dong , Catherine Espaillat , Alexandre Gallenne (7) , Poshak Gandhi (8) , Jean-François Gonzalez (9) , Chris Haniff , Sebastian Hoenig , John Ilee , Andrea Isella , Eric Jensen , Attila Juhasz , Stephen Kane , Makoto Kishimoto , Wilhelm Kley , Quentin Kral (10) , Kaitlin Kratter , Lucas Labadie , Sylvestre Lacour (11) , Greg Laughlin , Jean Le Bouquin , Michael S Michael (12) , Farzana Meru , Rafaël Millan-Gabet (13) , Florentin Millour (5) , Stefano Minardi (14) , Alessandro Morbidelli (5) , Chris Mordasini , Andreas Morlok (15) , Dave Mozurkewich , Richard P. Nelson (16) , Rene Oudmaijer , Chris Packham , Claudia Paladini (17) , Olja Panic , Romain G. Petrov (5) , Benjamin Pope , Joerg-Uwe Pott , Luis Henry Quiroga-Nuñez , Cristina Ramos Almeida , Sean N. Raymond (18) , Zsolt Regaly , Mark Reynolds (19) , Stephen T. Ridgway (20) , Stephen Rinehart , Michael Smith , Keivan Stassun , Jean Surdej (21) , Neal Turner , Gerard van Belle , Gautum Vasisht , Gerd Weigelt (22) , Edward Wishnow , Sebastian Wolf (23) , Ming Zhao (24) , Zhaohuan Zhu , Matthias Schreiber , Gaspard Duchêne , Amelia Bayo , Johan Olofsson , Theo A. ten Brummelaar (25) , Konrad R.W. Tristram (6) , Markus Wittkowski (6) , John Young (4) , Alexander Wallace , Denis Defrère (26) , Almudena Alonso-Herrero , Sebasti'An Z'U~niga-Fern'Andez , Antoine Mérand (25) , Michelle Creech-Eakman , Peter Tuthill

1 University of Michigan [Ann Arbor]
2 Department of Astronomy [Ann Arbor]
3 IPAG - Institut de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble
4 Cavendish Laboratory
5 LAGRANGE - Joseph Louis LAGRANGE
6 ESO - European Southern Observatory
7 Universidad de Concepción - University of Concepcion [Chile]
8 School of Physics and Astronomy [Southampton]
9 CRAL - Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon
10 LESIA (UMR_8109) - Laboratoire d'études spatiales et d'instrumentation en astrophysique
11 LESIA - Laboratoire d'études spatiales et d'instrumentation en astrophysique
12 UCY - University of Cyprus [Nicosia]
13 MSC - Michelson Science Center
14 Friedrich-Schiller-Universität = Friedrich Schiller University Jena [Jena, Germany]
15 CRPG - Centre de Recherches Pétrographiques et Géochimiques
16 QMUL - Queen Mary University of London
17 IFA - Institut für Astronomie, Universität Wien
18 ECLIPSE 2018
19 School of Computer Science and Software Engineering [Australia]
20 NOAO - National Optical Astronomy Observatory
21 Institut d'Astrophysique et de Géophysique [Liège]
22 MPIFR - Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie
23 Department of Materials Science and Engineering
24 Harbin University of Commerce [Heilongjiang]
25 CHARA - Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy
26 STAR - Space Sciences, Technologies and Astrophysics Research Institute

The Planet Formation Imager (PFI) is a near- and mid-infrared interferometer project with the driving sciencegoal of imaging directly the key stages of planet formation, including the young proto-planets themselves. Here,we will present an update on the work of the Science Working Group (SWG), including new simulations of duststructures during the assembly phase of planet formation and quantitative detection efficiencies for accretingand non-accreting young exoplanets as a function of mass and age. We use these results to motivate tworeference PFI designs consisting of a) twelve 3 m telescopes with a maximum baseline of 1.2 km focused onyoung exoplanet imaging and b) twelve 8 m telescopes optimized for a wider range of young exoplanets andprotoplanetary disk imaging out to the 150 K H2O ice line. Armed with 4×8 m telescopes, the ESO/VLTI canalready detect young exoplanets in principle and projects such as MATISSE, Hi-5 and Heimdallr are important PFI pathfinders to make this possible. We also discuss the state of technology development needed to makePFI more affordable, including progress towards new designs for inexpensive, small field-of-view, large aperturetelescopes and prospects for Cubesat-based space interferometry

Mots clés: Infrared interferometry; Planet formation; PFI

Domaines: Planétologie et astrophysique de la terre [astro-ph.EP]

John Monnier, Stefan Kraus, Amy Bonsor, Fabien Baron, Jean-Philippe Berger, et al.. Planet Formation Imager: project update. Optical and Infrared Interferometry and Imaging VI - Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 10701, id. 1070118 17 pp. (2018). 10-15 June 2018 Austin, Texas, United States, Jun 2018, Austin, United States. ⟨10.1117/12.2312683⟩. ⟨hal-01901978⟩