Related papers: Focal-plane wavefront sensing with the vector Apod…

Despite promising astrometric signals, to date there has been no success in direct imaging of a hypothesized third member of the Sirius system. Using the Clio instrument and MagAO adaptive optics system on the Magellan Clay 6.5 m telescope,…

Stellar coronagraph performance is highly sensitive to optical aberrations. In order to effectively suppress starlight for exoplanet imaging applications, low-order wavefront aberrations entering a coronagraph such as tip-tilt, defocus and…

Direct detection of exoplanets requires high dynamic range imaging. Coronagraphs could be the solution, but their performance in space is limited by wavefront errors (manufacturing errors on optics, temperature variations, etc.), which…

Wave-front sensing from focal plane multiple images is a promising technique for high-contrast imaging systems. However, the wave-front error of an optics system can be properly reconstructed only when it is very small. This paper presents…

Continuous wavefront sensing benefits space observatories in on-orbit optical performance maintenance. To measure the phase of a wavefront, phase retrieval is an attractive technique as it uses multiple point spread function (PSF) images…

Instrumental aberrations strongly limit high-contrast imaging of exoplanets, especially when they produce quasistatic speckles in the science images. With the help of recent advances in deep learning, we have developed in previous works an…

A crucial component of the high-contrast instrumental chain in astronomy is the wavefront sensor (WFS). A key property of this component is its sensitivities, which reflect its ability to efficiently use incoming photons to encode the phase…

Exoplanet direct imaging using adaptive optics (AO) is often limited by non-common path aberrations (NCPAs) and aberrations that are invisible to traditional pupil-plane wavefront sensors (WFSs). This can be remedied by focal-plane (FP)…

The continual push to directly image exoplanets at lower masses and closer separations orbiting around bright stars remains limited by both quasi-static and residual adaptive optics (AO) aberration. In previous papers we have proposed a…

Optical aberrations prevent telescopes from reaching their theoretical diffraction limit. Once estimated, these aberrations can be compensated for using deformable mirrors in a closed loop. Focal plane wavefront sensing enables the…

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…

Fewer than 1% of all exoplanets detected to date have been characterized on the basis of spectroscopic observations of their atmosphere. Unlike indirect methods, high-contrast imaging offers access to atmospheric signatures by separating…

We present new on-sky results for the Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics imager (SCExAO) verifying and quantifying the contrast gain enabled by key components: the closed-loop coronagraphic low-order wavefront sensor (CLOWFS) and…

High-contrast imaging (HCI) observations of exoplanets can be limited by the island effect (IE). On the current generation of telescopes, the IE becomes a severe problem when the ground wind speed is below a few meters per second. This is…

The Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics (SCExAO) instrument is a multipurpose high-contrast imaging platform designed for the discovery and detailed characterization of exoplanetary systems and serves as a testbed for high-contrast…

The correction of quasi-static wavefront errors within a coronagraphic optical system will be a key challenge to overcome in order to directly image exoplanets in reflected light. These quasi-static errors are caused by mid to high-order…

The use of Wavefront Sensors (WFS) is nowadays fundamental in the field of instrumental optics. This paper discusses the principle of an original and recently proposed new class of WFS. Their principle consists in evaluating the slopes of…

The exploration of circumstellar environments by means of direct imaging to search for Earth-like exoplanets is one of the challenges of modern astronomy. One of the current limitations are evolving non-common path aberrations (NCPA) that…

We present the first astronomical observations obtained with an Apodizing Phase Plate (APP). The plate is designed to suppress the stellar diffraction pattern by 5 magnitudes from 2-9 lambda/D over a 180 degree region. Stellar images were…

Context. Solar wavefront sensing has been a challenge for astrophysical instrumentalists, due to the low contrast between the Sun and the sky background compared to night-time observations, which limits the performance of adaptive optics…