Related papers: Fast Linearized Coronagraph Optimizer (FALCO) IV. …
NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) aims to achieve starlight suppression to the $10^{-10}$ level for the detection and spectral characterization of Earth-like exoplanets. Broadband ozone absorption features are key biosignatures that…
Imaging exoplanetary systems is essential to characterizing exoplanetary systems and to studying planet-disk interactions to understand planet formation. Such imaging in the visible and near-infrared is challenging because these objects are…
The 2020 Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics endorsed space-based high contrast imaging for the detection and characterization of habitable exoplanets as a key priority for the upcoming decade. To advance the maturity of starlight…
A major science goal of future, large-aperture, optical space telescopes is to directly image and spectroscopically analyze reflected light from potentially habitable exoplanets. To accomplish this, the optical system must suppress…
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…
Future large segmented space telescopes and their coronagraphic instruments are expected to provide the resolution and sensitivity to observe Earth-like planets with a 10^10 contrast ratio at less than 100 mas from their host star. Advanced…
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…
The World Space Observatory for Ultraviolet (WSO-UV) is an orbital optical telescope with a 1.7 m-diameter primary mirror currently under development. The WSO-UV is aimed to operate in the 115-310 nm UV spectral range. Its two major science…
The search for exoplanets is pushing adaptive optics systems on ground-based telescopes to their limits. One of the major limitations at small angular separations, exactly where exoplanets are predicted to be, is the servo-lag of the…
The second-generation instrument SPHERE, dedicated to high-contrast imaging, will soon be in operation on the European Very Large Telescope. Such an instrument relies on an extreme adaptive optics system coupled with a coronagraph that…
Direct imaging of exoplanets relies on complex wavefront sensing and control architectures. In addition to fast adaptive optics systems, most of the future high-contrast imaging instruments will soon be equipped with focal plane wavefront…
I derive analytic scalings for coronagraphic imaging searches for extrasolar planets. I compute the efficiency of detecting planets about any given star, and from this compute dimensionless distribution functions for the detected planets as…
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…
Direct imaging of exoplanets by reflected starlight is extremely challenging due to the large luminosity ratio to the primary star. Wave-front control is a critical technique to attenuate the speckle noise in order to achieve an extremely…
The Coronagraph Instrument (CGI) for NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) will constitute a dramatic step forward for high-contrast imaging, integral field spectroscopy, and polarimetry of exoplanets and circumstellar disks,…
We explore the capabilities of a starshade mission to directly image multi-star systems. In addition to the diffracted and scattered light for the on-axis star, a multi-star system features additional starlight leakage from the off-axis…
Astronomers working with faint targets will benefit greatly from improved image quality on current and planned ground-based telescopes. At present, most adaptive optic systems are targeted at the highest resolution with bright guide stars.…
Observations of binary stars for faint companions with conventional coronagraphic methods are challenging, as both targets will be bright enough to obscure any nearby faint companions if their scattered light is not suppressed. We propose…
Integral field spectrographs are major instruments to study the mechanisms involved in the formation and the evolution of early galaxies. When combined with multi-object spectroscopy, those spectrographs can behave as machines used to…
The development of spaceborne coronagraphic technology is of paramount importance to the detection of habitable exoplanets in visible light. In space, coronagraphs are able to bypass the limitations imposed by the atmosphere to reach deeper…