Science with the Carlina hypertelescope

Studies are currently underway to propose a generation of post-VLTI interferometers (Carlina, OHANA, Keops, etc.). Such interferometers will open new fields of research in astrophysics by imaging the surfaces of supergiant stars, gravitational microlensing, AGN, Hot Jupiters, etc. To achieve these goals, they will have to respond to several criteria: to provide very high angular resolution (baselines > 100 m), to be equipped with a large number of mirrors (rich UV coverage), and to be able to accommodate high tech instrumentation such as an Adaptive Optics system and a coronagraph. We describe the optical Carlina architecture and show that it fulfills all these criteria. We give new results obtained with the prototype of Carlina currently built at Observatoire de Haute-Provence. Considering its expected specifications, Carlina will operate in complementarity with ELTs and very long baseline interferometers.