Related papers: Apodized Pupil Lyot Coronagraph Working Without Ly…
We derive an analytical solution to the computation of the output of a Lyot coronagraph for a given complex amplitude on the pupil plane. This solution, which does not require any simplifying assumption, relies on an expansion of the…
As the performance of coronagraphs improves, the achievable contrast is more and more dependent of the shape of the pupil. The future generation of space and ground based coronagraphic instruments will have to achieve high contrast levels…
The PIAA is a now well demonstrated high contrast technique that uses an intermediate remapping of the pupil for high contrast coronagraphy (apodization), before restoring it to recover classical imaging capabilities. This paper presents…
The detection of molecular species in the atmospheres of earth-like exoplanets orbiting nearby stars requires an optical system that suppresses starlight and maximizes the sensitivity to the weak planet signals at small angular separations.…
Several Extreme Adaptive Optics (XAO) systems dedicated to the detection and characterisation of the exoplanets are currently in operation for 8-10 meter class telescopes. Coronagraphs are commonly used in these facilities to reject the…
Imaging terrestrial exoplanets around nearby stars is a formidable technical challenge, requiring the development of coronagraphs to suppress the stellar halo of diffracted light at the location of the planet. In this review, we derive the…
Advancing the technological development of small inner working angle (IWA) coronagraphs is essential to enabling high-contrast imaging of temperate exoplanets with future extremely large telescopes. The PIAACMC has been shown to closely…
Coronagraph instruments on future space telescopes will enable the direct detection and characterization of Earth-like exoplanets around Sun-like stars for the first time. The quest for the optimal optical coronagraph designs has made rapid…
High-contrast imaging in the next decade aims to image exoplanets at smaller angular separations and deeper contrasts than ever before. A problem that has recently garnered attention for telescopes equipped with high-contrast coronagraphs…
The direct detection of extrasolar planets by imaging means is limited by the large flux of light from the host star being scattered into the region of interest by a variety of processes, including diffraction. Coronagraphs are devices that…
Context. Phase-mask coronagraphy is advantageous in terms of inner working angle and discovery space. It is however still plagued by drawbacks such as sensitivity to tip-tilt errors and chromatism. A nulling stellar coronagraph based on the…
The vortex coronagraph is one of the most promising coronagraphs for high contrast imaging because of its simplicity, small inner working angle, high throughput, and clear off-axis discovery space. However, as with most coronagraphs,…
We propose a coronagraphic system with fourth-order null for off-axis segmented telescopes, which is sufficiently insensitive to the telescope pointing errors and finite angular diameter of the host star to enable high-contrast imaging of…
The band-limited coronagraph is a nearly ideal concept that theoretically enables perfect cancellation of all the light of an on-axis source. Over the past years, several prototypes have been developed and tested in the laboratory, and more…
Aims. We present a solution to improve the performance of coronagraphs for the detection of exo-planets. Methods. We simulate numerically several kinds of coronagraphic systems, with the aim of evaluating the gain obtained with an adaptive…
Telescope pupil fragmentation from spiders generates specific aberrations observed at various telescopes and expected on the large telescopes under construction. This so-called island effect induces differential pistons, tips and tilts on…
Coronagraphy is a very efficient technique for identifying and characterizing extra-solar planets orbiting in the habitable zone of their parent star, especially when used in a space environment. An important family of coronagraphs is based…
The current generation of ground-based coronagraphic instruments uses deformable mirrors to correct for phase errors and to improve contrast levels at small angular separations. Improving these techniques, several space and ground based…
We have built a series of notch filter image masks that make the Lyot coronagraph less susceptible to low-spatial-frequency optical aberrations. In this paper, we present experimental results of their performance in the lab using…
We present the results of the first laboratory experiment of checkerboard shaped pupil binary mask coronagraphs using visible light, in the context of the R&D activities for future mid-infrared space missions such as the 3.5 m SPICA…