Related papers: Confidence Level and Sensitivity Limits in High Co…
A new generation of telescopes with mirror diameters of 20 m or more, called extremely large telescopes (ELTs) has the potential to provide unprecedented imaging and spectroscopy of exo-planetary systems, if the difficulties in achieving…
Direct imaging and spectral characterization of exoplanets using extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) is a key science goal of future extremely large telescopes and space observatories. However, quasi-static wavefront errors will limit the…
We propose a new approach for the problem of relative depth estimation from a single image. Instead of directly regressing over depth scores, we formulate the problem as estimation of a probability distribution over depth and aim to learn…
The effects of photon noise, aliasing, wavefront chromaticity and scintillation on the point spread function (PSF) contrast achievable with ground based adaptive optics (AO) are evaluated for different wavefront sensing schemes. I show that…
We discuss the results of a multi-wavelength differential imaging lab experiment with the High Contrast Imaging Testbed (HCIT) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The HCIT combines a Lyot coronagraph with a Xinetics deformable mirror in a…
We present a novel machine-learning approach for detecting faint point sources in high-contrast adaptive optics imaging datasets. The most widely used algorithms for primary subtraction aim to decouple bright stellar speckle noise from…
It is well known that the solar gravitational field can be considered as a telescope with a prime focus at locations beyond 550 au. In this work we present a new derivation of the wave-optical properties of the system, by adapting the…
In object tracking and state estimation problems, ambiguous evidence such as imprecise measurements and the absence of detections can contain valuable information and thus be leveraged to further refine the probabilistic belief state. In…
Change detection plays an important role in most video-based applications. The first stage is to build appropriate background model, which is now becoming increasingly complex as more sophisticated statistical approaches are introduced to…
We investigate the limits of ground-based astrometry with adaptive optics using the core of the Galactic globular cluster M5. Adaptive optics systems provide near diffraction-limit imaging with the world's largest telescopes. The…
Weak gravitational lensing has the potential to constrain cosmological parameters to high precision. However, as shown by the Shear TEsting Programmes (STEP) and GRavitational lEnsing Accuracy Testing (GREAT) Challenges, measuring galaxy…
Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (FCS) yields measurement parameters (number of molecules, diffusion time) that characterize the concentration and kinetics of fluorescent molecules within a supposedly known observation volume. Absolute…
Coronagraphic imaging of exoplanets using ground-based instruments on large telescopes is intrinsically limited by speckles induced by uncorrected aberrations. These aberrations originate from the imperfect correction of the atmosphere by…
A kernel method is proposed to estimate the condensed density of the generalized eigenvalues of pencils of Hankel matrices whose elements have a joint noncentral Gaussian distribution with nonidentical covariance. These pencils arise when…
This paper describes computationally efficient approaches and associated theoretical performance guarantees for the detection of known targets and anomalies from few projection measurements of the underlying signals. The proposed approaches…
The analysis of exoplanetary atmospheres by means of high-resolution spectroscopy is an expanding research field which provides information on chemical composition, thermal structure, atmospheric dynamics and orbital velocity of exoplanets.…
High-contrast imaging provided by a coronagraph is critical for the direction imaging of the Earth-like planet orbiting its bright parent star. A major limitation for such direct imaging is the speckle noise that is induced from the…
We study the limits of accuracy for weak lensing maps of dark matter using diffuse 21-cm radiation from the pre-reionization epoch using simulations. We improve on previous "optimal" quadratic lensing estimators by using shear and…
The ultimate sensitivity of optical detection is limited by the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The first part of the paper shows that coherence plays an important role in the noise analysis. Although interference between an auxiliary wave and…
We derive fundamental precision bounds for single-point axial localization. For the case of a Gaussian beam, this ultimate limit can be achieved with a single intensity scan, provided the camera is placed at one of two optimal transverse…