Towards characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres with the VLT Interferometer

Abstract

The direct observation of extrasolar planets and their spectra is coming into reach with the new generation of ground-based near-IR interferometers, like the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). The high contrast between star and planet requires an excellent calibration of atmospheric distortions. Proposed techniques are the observation of color-differential or closure phases. The differential phase, however, is only in a first order approximation independent of atmospheric influences because of dispersion effects. This might prevent differential phase observations of extrasolar planets. The closure phase, on the other hand, is immune to atmospheric phase errors and is therefore a promising alternative. We have modeled the response of the closure phase instrument AMBER at the VLTI to realistic models of known extrasolar planetary systems taking into account their theoretical spectra as well as the geometry of the VLTI. We present a strategy to determine the geometry of the planetary system and the spectrum of the extrasolar planet from closure phase observations in a deterministic way without any a priori assumptions. We show that the nulls in the closure phase do only depend on the system geometry but not on the planetary or stellar spectra. Therefore, the geometry of the system can be determined by measuring the nulls in the closure phase and braking the remaining ambiguity due to the unknown system orientation by means of observations at different hour angles. Based on the known geometry, the planet spectrum can be directly synthesized from the closure phases.