Key Technologies for the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope Coronagraph Instrument
Abstract
The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) Coronagraph Instrument (CGI) is a high-contrast imager and integral field spectrograph that will enable the study of exoplanets and circumstellar disks at visible wavelengths. Ground-based high-contrast instrumentation has fundamentally limited performance at small working angles, even under optimistic assumptions for 30m-class telescopes. There is a strong scientific driver for better performance, particularly at visible wavelengths. Future flagship mission concepts aim to image Earth analogues with visible light flux ratios of more than 10^10. CGI is a critical intermediate step toward that goal, with a predicted 10^8-9 flux ratio capability in the visible. CGI achieves this through improvements over current ground and space systems in several areas: (i) Hardware: space-qualified (TRL9) deformable mirrors, detectors, and coronagraphs, (ii) Algorithms: wavefront sensing and control; post-processing of integral field spectrograph, polarimetric, and extended object data, and (iii) Validation of telescope and instrument models at high accuracy and precision. This white paper, submitted to the 2018 NAS Exoplanet Science Strategy call, describes the status of key CGI technologies and presents ways in which performance is likely to evolve as the CGI design matures.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1901.04050,
title = {Key Technologies for the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope Coronagraph Instrument},
author = {Vanessa P. Bailey and Lee Armus and Bala Balasubramanian and Pierre Baudoz and Andrea Bellini and Dominic Benford and Bruce Berriman and Aparna Bhattacharya and Anthony Boccaletti and Eric Cady and Sebastiano Calchi Novati and Kenneth Carpenter and David Ciardi and Brendan Crill and William Danchi and John Debes and Richard Demers and Kjetil Dohlen and Robert Effinger and Marc Ferrari and Margaret Frerking and Dawn Gelino and Julien Girard and Kevin Grady and Tyler Groff and Leon Harding and George Helou and Avenhaus Henning and Markus Janson and Jason Kalirai and Stephen Kane and N. Jeremy Kasdin and Matthew Kenworthy and Brian Kern and John Krist and Jeffrey Kruk and Anne Marie Lagrange and Seppo Laine and Maud Langlois and Herve Le Coroller and Chris Lindensmith and Patrick Lowrance and Anne-Lise Maire and Sangeeta Malhotra and Avi Mandell and Michael McElwain and Camilo Mejia Prada and Bertrand Mennesson and Tiffany Meshkat and Dwight Moody and Patrick Morrissey and Leonidas Moustakas and Mamadou N'Diaye and Bijan Nemati and Charley Noecker and Roberta Paladini and Marshall Perrin and Ilya Poberezhskiy and Marc Postman and Laurent Pueyo and Solange Ramirez and Clement Ranc and Jason Rhodes and A. J. E. Riggs and Maxime Rizzo and Aki Roberge and Daniel Rouan and Joshua Schlieder and Byoung-Joon Seo and Stuart Shaklan and Fang Shi and Remi Soummer and David Spergel and Karl Stapelfeldt and Christopher Stark and Motohide Tamura and Hong Tang and John Trauger and Margaret Turnbull and Roeland van der Marel and Arthur Vigan and Benjamin Williams and Edward J. Wollack and Marie Ygouf and Feng Zhao and Hanying Zhoud and Neil Zimmerman},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.04050},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
Submitted in response to the 2018 NAS Exoplanet Science Strategy call. 5 pages, 2 figures