Telescope birefringence and phase errors in the Gravity instrument at the VLT interferometer
Résumé
We use a numerical model of the birefringence in the VLT Interferometer (VLTI) and the Gravity instrument to study the astrometric phase errors that arise when two conditions are simultaneously present: differential birefringence between two VLTI arms, and different polarizations of the science and fringe tracker sources. We present measurements of the VLTI birefringence, that are used to validate our model. We show how a suitable alignment of the eigenvectors of the optical train eliminates the phase error.