Related papers: Techniques for High-Contrast Imaging in Multi-Star…

The success of ground-based instruments for high contrast exoplanet imaging depends on the degree to which adaptive optics (AO) systems can mitigate atmospheric turbulence. While modern AO systems typically suffer from millisecond time lags…

While high-resolution cross-correlation spectroscopy (HRCCS) techniques have proven effective at characterizing the atmospheres of transiting and non-transiting hot Jupiters, the limitations of these techniques are not well understood. We…

The leading difficulty in achieving the contrast necessary to directly image exoplanets and associated structures (eg. protoplanetary disks) at wavelengths ranging from the visible to the infrared are quasi-static speckles, and they are…

Context. Direct imaging of exoplanets takes advantage of state-of-the-art adaptive optics (AO) systems, coronagraphy, and post-processing techniques. Coronagraphs attenuate starlight to mitigate the unfavorable flux ratio between an…

Exoplanet imaging is a major challenge in astrophysics due to the need for high angular resolution and high contrast. We present a multi-scale statistical model for the nuisance component corrupting multivariate image series at high…

The direct imaging of an Earth-like exoplanet will require sub-nanometric wavefront control across large light-collecting apertures, to reject host starlight and detect the faint planetary signal. Current adaptive optics (AO) systems, which…

In the context of exoplanet detection, the performance of coronagraphs is limited by wavefront errors. To efficiently correct for these aberrations with a deformable mirror, it is mandatory to measure them using the science detector with a…

Starshades are a leading technology to enable the direct detection and spectroscopic characterization of Earth-like exoplanets. In an effort to advance starshade technology through system level demonstrations, the McMath-Pierce Solar…

Astrometric measurements of stellar systems are becoming significantly more precise and common, with many ground and space-based instruments and missions approaching 1 microarcsecond precision. We examine the multi-wavelength astrometric…

Detecting exoplanets and other faint sources of emitted and reflected light near a bright star requires deeply suppressing the starlight while efficiently transmitting the dim light from its surroundings. This suppression can be carried out…

Polarization aberrations originating from the telescope and high-contrast imaging instrument optics introduce polarization-dependent speckles and associated errors in the image plane, affecting the measured exoplanet signal. Understanding…

High-contrast imaging of debris disk systems permits us to assess the composition and size distribution of circumstellar dust, to probe recent dynamical histories, and to directly detect and characterize embedded exoplanets. Observations of…

Pupil-mapping is a technique whereby a uniformly-illuminated input pupil, such as from starlight, can be mapped into a non-uniformly illuminated exit pupil, such that the image formed from this pupil will have suppressed sidelobes, many…

We conducted a number of multi-band coronagraph experiments using a vacuum chamber and a binary-shaped pupil mask which in principle should work at all wavelengths, in the context of the research and development on a coronagraph to observe…

We summarize the current best polychromatic (10 to 20 % bandwidth) contrast performance demonstrated in the laboratory by different starlight suppression approaches and systems designed to directly characterize exoplanets around nearby…

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…

Exoplanet research has shown an incessant growth since the first claim of a hot giant planet around a solar-like star in the mid-1990s. Today, the new facilities are working to spot the first habitable rocky planets around low-mass stars as…

The detection of exoplanets in high-contrast imaging (HCI) data hinges on post-processing methods to remove spurious light from the host star. So far, existing methods for this task hardly utilize any of the available domain knowledge about…

Over the past two decades, thousands of confirmed exoplanets have been detected. The next major challenge is to characterize these other worlds and their stellar systems. Much information on the composition and formation of exoplanets and…

Context. The next generation of space-borne instruments dedicated to the direct detection of exoplanets requires unprecedented levels of wavefront control precision. Coronagraphic wavefront sensing techniques for these instruments must…