Breakthrough sciences with the second-generation optical interferometry instrumentation

Astronomical optical interferometric instruments combine light from two or more telescopes separated by hundreds of meters and deliver high-angular resolutions at the order of milli-arcseconds and astrometric precision at tens of micro-arcseconds. In this talk, I describe our recently built second-generation and highly sensitive instrumentation projects, VLTI/GRAVITY and CHARA/MIRC-X. These powerful instruments have delivered breakthrough sciences, including a study of our Galactic center black hole (awarded Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 for this work), imaging of inner au regions of protoplanetary disks, imaging of stellar surfaces, and exoplanet characterization. For characterizing exoplanets, the interferometry technique is an order magnitude better than currently operating high-contrast adaptive optics systems by doing speckle suppression through spatial coherence, allowing isolation of the light of a planet from the host star. I describe these exciting projects and end with my ongoing instrumentation and science projects aimed at exoplanet characterizations.