Analysis and control of polarization effects on phase closure and image acquisition in a fibre-linked three-telescope stellar interferometer

This paper reports the imaging laboratory tests on a fibre-linked telescope array including three interferometric arms. We demonstrate the necessity of using polarization-maintaining fibres to obtain a steady calibration of the phase closure term. The experimental data consist of the complex visibility function acquisitions corresponding to the object Fourier spectrum. The redundant spacing sampling procedure has been selected in order to be robust, leading to full control of the experimental parameters. This work is experimentally illustrated by a one-dimensional object image restoration with 5% accuracy on the intensity.