Related papers: Apodized pupil Lyot coronagraphs designs for futur…

Several recent designs for planet-finding telescopes use coronagraphs operating at visible wavelengths to suppress starlight along the telescope's optical axis while transmitting any off-axis light from circumstellar material. We describe a…

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.…

Directly imaging Earth-sized exoplanets with a visible-light coronagraph instrument on a space telescope will require a system that can achieve $\sim10^{-10}$ raw contrast and maintain it for the duration of observations (on the order of…

One of the science drivers for the extremely large telescope (ELT) is imaging and spectroscopy of exo-solar planets located as close as 20mas to their parent star. The application requires a well thought-out design of the high contrast…

We present a study of Lyot style (i.e., classical, band-limited, and Gaussian occulter) coronagraphy on extremely large, highly-segmented telescopes. We show that while increased telescope diameter is always an advantage for high dynamic…

The spectroscopy of faint planetary-mass companions to nearby stars is one of the main challenges that new-generation high-contrast spectro-imagers are going to face. In a previous work we presented a long slit coronagraph (LSC), for which…

In the context of high dynamic range imaging, this study presents a breakthrough for the understanding of Apodized Pupil Lyot Coronagraphs, making them available for arbitrary aperture shapes. These new solutions find immediate application…

Phase masks coronagraphs can be seen as linear systems that spatially redistribute, in the pupil plane, the energy collected by the telescope. Most of the on-axis light must ideally be rejected outside the aperture to be blocked with a Lyot…

We present some of the High Dynamic Range Imaging activities developed around the coronagraphic test-bench of the Laboratoire A. H. Fizeau (Nice). They concern research and development of an Apodized Lyot Coronagraph (ALC) for the…

Direct imaging and spectroscopy of Earth-like planets and young Jupiters require contrasts up to 10^6-10^10 at angular separations of a few dozen milliarcseconds. To achieve this goal, one of the most promising approaches consists of using…

High performance coronagraphic imaging at small inner working angle requires efficient control of low order aberrations. The absence of accurate pointing control at small separation not only degrades coronagraph starlight rejection but also…

One of the primary science goals of the Large UV/Optical/Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR) mission concept is to detect and characterize Earth-like exoplanets orbiting nearby stars with direct imaging. The success of its coronagraph instrument…

The WFIRST-AFTA 2.4 m telescope will provide in the next decade the opportunity to host a coronagraph for the imaging and spectroscopy of planets and disks. The telescope, however, is not ideal, given its obscured aperture. Only recently…

Oncoming exoplanet spectro-imagers like the Planetary Camera and Spectrograph (PCS) for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will aim for a new class of exoplanets, including Earth-like planets evolving around M dwarfs i.e., closer than…

We propose a new approach for high-contrast imaging at the diffraction limit using segmented telescopes in a modest observation bandwidth. This concept, named "spectroscopic fourth-order coronagraphy", is based on a fourth-order coronagraph…

We study the way Lyot coronagraphs with unapodized entrance pupils respond to small, low order phase aberrations. This study is applicable to ground-based adaptive optics coronagraphs operating at 90% and higher Strehl ratios, as well as to…

We compare coronagraph concepts and investigate their behavior and suitability for planet finder projects with Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs, 30-42 meters class telescopes). For this task, we analyze the impact of major error sources…

As adaptive optics technology continues to improve, the stellar coronagraph will play an ever increasing role in ground-based high-contrast imaging observations. Though several different image masks exist for the most common type of…

The Optimal Optical Coronagraph (OOC) Workshop at the Lorentz Center in September 2017 in Leiden, the Netherlands gathered a diverse group of 25 researchers working on exoplanet instrumentation to stimulate the emergence and sharing of new…

Directly imaging Earth-like exoplanets (``exoEarths'') with a coronagraph instrument on a space telescope requires a stable wavefront with optical path differences limited to tens of picometers RMS during exposure times of a few hours.…