Probing the innermost regions of the beta Pic planetary system with near-infrared interferometry

In this talk, I will review the near-infrared interferometric view of the innermost regions (< 4 AU) around beta Pictoris. I will first present the results of VLTI/AMBER and VLTI/PIONIER observations aiming to detect faint companions around beta Pic. These data sets allow us to exclude the presence of companions a few hundred times as faint as the central star at angular separations up to about 100 mas. The median sensitivity in our search region corresponds to a brown dwarf of about 30 Mjup at beta Pic's age. I will then discuss the search for hot circumstellar dust that we carried out with VLTI/PIONIER. Based on accurate squared visibilities obtained at short baselines, we have been able to identify the presence of resolved circumstellar emission with an integrated brightness amounting to about 1.4% of the stellar brightness in H band. The spectral shape of the detected excess across the H band is consistant with thermal emission and/or reflected light from hot dust grains located in the innermost regions of the planetary system, although forward scattering by dust grains located further away (but still within the PIONIER field-of-view, i.e., close to the line of sight) could also significantly contribute to the detected circumstellar emission. I will conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of these interferometric observations on our view of the planetary system architecture around beta Pic.