Simulating medium-spectral-resolution exoplanet characterization with SCALES angular/reference differential imaging
Abstract
SCALES (Slicer Combined with Array of Lenslets for Exoplanet Spectroscopy) is a 2 - 5 micron high-contrast lenslet-based integral field spectrograph (IFS) designed to characterize exoplanets and their atmospheres. The SCALES medium-spectral-resolution mode uses a lenslet subarray with a 0.34 x 0.36 arcsecond field of view which allows for exoplanet characterization at increased spectral resolution. We explore the sensitivity limitations of this mode by simulating planet detections in the presence of realistic noise sources. We use the SCALES simulator scalessim to generate high-fidelity mock observations of planets that include speckle noise from their host stars, as well as other atmospheric and instrumental noise effects. We employ both angular and reference differential imaging as methods of disentangling speckle noise from the injected planet signals. These simulations allow us to assess the feasibility of speckle deconvolution for SCALES medium resolution data, and to test whether one approach outperforms another based on planet angular separations and contrasts.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2310.12193,
title = {Simulating medium-spectral-resolution exoplanet characterization with SCALES angular/reference differential imaging},
author = {Aditi Desai and Stephanie E. Sallum and Ravinder Banyal and Natalie Batalha and Natasha Batalha and Geoff Blake and Tim Brandt and Zack Briesemeister and Katherine de Kleer and Imke de Pater and Josh Eisner and Wen-fai Fong and Tom Greene and Mitsuhiko Honda and Isabel Kain and Charlie Kilpatrick and Mackenzie Lach and Mike Liu and Bruce Macintosh and Raquel A. Martinez and Dimitri Mawet and Brittany Miles and Caroline Morley and Diana Powell and Patrick Sheehan and Andrew J. Skemer and Justin Spilker and R. Deno Stelter and Jordan Stone and Arun Surya and Sivarani Thirupathi and Kevin Wagner and Yifan Zhou},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.12193},
year = {2023}
}