The planet formation imager

John D. Monnier , Stefan Kraus , Michael J. Ireland , Fabien Baron , Amelia Bayo , Jean-Philippe Berger (1) , Michelle Creech-Eakman , Ruobing Dong , Gaspard Duchêne , Catherine Espaillat , Chris Haniff , Sebastian Hönig , Andrea Isella , Attila Juhasz , Lucas Labadie , Sylvestre Lacour (2) , Stephanie Leifer , Antoine Merand , Ernest Michael , Stefano Minardi , Christoph Mordasini , David Mozurkewich , Johan Olofsson , Claudia Paladini , Romain Petrov (3) , Jörg-Uwe Pott , Stephen Ridgway , Stephen Rinehart , Keivan Stassun , Jean Surdej , Theo Ten Brummelaar , Neal Turner , Peter Tuthill , Kerry Vahala , Gerard van Belle , Gautam Vasisht , Ed Wishnow , John Young , Zhaohuan Zhu

1 IPAG - Institut de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble
2 Observatoire de Paris
3 OCA - Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur

The Planet Formation Imager (PFI, www.planetformationimager.org) is a next-generation infrared interferometer array with the primary goal of imaging the active phases of planet formation in nearby star forming regions. PFI will be sensitive to warm dust emission using mid-infrared capabilities made possible by precise fringe tracking in the near-infrared. An L/M band combiner will be especially sensitive to thermal emission from young exoplanets (and their disks) with a high spectral resolution mode to probe the kinematics of CO and H₂O gas. In this paper, we give an overview of the main science goals of PFI, define a baseline PFI architecture that can achieve those goals, point at remaining technical challenges, and suggest activities today that will help make the Planet Formation Imager facility a reality.

Keywords: Interferometry; Infrared; Planet formation; Exoplanets; Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics; Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics

Domains: Sciences of the Universe [physics]

John D. Monnier, Stefan Kraus, Michael J. Ireland, Fabien Baron, Amelia Bayo, et al.. The planet formation imager. Experimental Astronomy, 2018, 46, pp.517-529. ⟨10.1007/s10686-018-9594-1⟩. ⟨insu-03693515⟩