Circular aperture interferometric apodization using homothety – I. Simulation results

In this paper we describe a two-dimensional apodization of a circular aperture produced by interferometry. The light that is diffracted by a circular aperture is split into two beams of different amplitudes, where one of them has undergone a homothety to change its radial dimensions using an afocal optical system. The two beams are then combined coherently to form an apodized point-spread function (PSF). This procedure allows us to reduce the diffraction wings of the PSF, with different reduction factors depending on the combination of parameters.