2001A&A...376L..31B

We present in this paper the astronomical validation of a new approach to interferometric starlight combination. Using integrated optics technologies developed by the telecommunication industry, we have implemented optical circuits on coin-size chips that combine two beams and provide simultaneous photometric calibration signals. We report the first interferometric observations of stars using such beam combiners at the Infrared Optical Telescope Array (IOTA). This result opens the way to a new generation of miniaturized, high performance, and reliable instruments, dedicated to interferometric aperture synthesis.