Related papers: Implementing focal-plane phase masks optimized for…
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…
Phase masks have numerous applications in astronomical optics, in particular related to two themes: coronography for detection and analysis of extrasolar planets or circumstellar disks, and wavefront analysis for extremely precise adaptive…
The detection and characterisation of extra-solar planets is a major theme driving modern astronomy, with the vast majority of such measurements being achieved by Doppler radial-velocity and transit observations. Another technique -- direct…
Coronagraphs of the apodized pupil and shaped pupil varieties use the Fraunhofer diffraction properties of amplitude masks to create regions of high contrast in the vicinity of a target star. Here we present a hybrid coronagraph…
The detection and characterization of Earth-like exoplanets around Sun-like stars for future flagship missions requires coronagraphs to achieve contrasts on the order of 1e-10 at close angular separations and over large spectral bandwidths…
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…
Most telescope designs have a circular-shape aperture. We demonstrate that telescopes with an elongated pupil have better contrast, at lower separations, between a bright central star and a faint companion. We simulate images for an…
Context. The Annular Groove Phase Mask (AGPM) is one possible implementation of the vector vortex coronagraph, where the helical phase ramp is produced by a concentric subwavelength grating. For several years, we have been manufacturing…
Quasi-static aberrations in coronagraphic systems are the ultimate limitation to the capabilities of exoplanet imagers both ground-based and space-based. These aberrations - which can be due to various causes such as optics alignment or…
We introduce a new class of solutions for Apodized Pupil Lyot Coronagraphs (APLC) with segmented aperture telescopes to remove broadband diffracted light from a star with a contrast level of $10^{10}$. These new coronagraphs provide a key…
A phase-sensitive microscopy technique is proposed and demonstrated that employs the momentum correlations inherent in spontaneous parametric down-conversion. One photon from a correlated pair is focused onto a microscopic target while the…
CONTEXT: The four-quadrant phase mask stellar coronagraph, introduced by D. Rouan et al., is capable of achieving very high dynamical range imaging and was studied in the context of the direct detection of extra-solar planets. Achromatic…
Very high dynamical range coronagraphs targeting direct exo-planet detection (10^9 - 10^10 contrast) at small angular separation (few lambda/D units) usually require an input wavefront quality on the order of ten thousandths of wavelength…
Deep sub-diffraction exoplanet discovery currently lies beyond the reach of state-of-the-art direct imaging coronagraphs, which typically have an inner working angle larger than the diffraction scale. We present an experimental…
We report on the performance of a vector apodizing phase plate coronagraph that operates over a wavelength range of $2-5 \mu$m and is installed in MagAO/Clio2 at the 6.5 m Magellan Clay telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile. The…
One of the top remaining science challenges in astronomical optics is the direct imaging and characterization of extrasolar planets and planetary systems. Directly imaging exoplanets from ground-based observatories requires combining…
The electric field conjugation (EFC) algorithm has shown promise for removing scattered starlight from high-contrast imaging measurements, both in numerical simulations and laboratory experiments. To prepare for the deployment of EFC using…
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…
For direct imaging of exoplanets, Scalar Vortex Coronagraphs (SVCs) are an attractive alternative to the popularly used Vector Vortex Coronagraphs (VVCs). This is primarily because they are able to induce the same phase ramp regardless of…
The new frontier in the quest for the highest contrast levels in the focal plane of a coronagraph is now the correction of the large diffractive artifacts effects introduced at the science camera by apertures of increasing complexity. The…