The development of integrated photonic instruments, and photonic nulling/interferometry in particular, is of great international interest and Australia is a world leader in this area.
The Heimdallr instrument is the core enabling fringe-tracking technology for the entire Asgard suite for the VLT. The Asgard instruments are a diverse suite of back-end beam combiners spanning different wavelength ranges and offering single mode interferometric spectrometer, high sensitivity science instrument with fringe tracker, single-mode Kernel-nuller and high-contrast imager in the mid-IR.
The development phase of this core component of this instrument suite – Heimdallr – is now underway at Astralis. The current GLINT instruments are the pathfinders for these future large-scale instruments. Heimdallr will be deployed as a visitor instrument at the VLTI.
