Related papers: Focal Plane Wavefront Sensing on SUBARU/SCExAO

In the last two decades many people have been searching for the optimal wavefront sensor as it can boost the performance of high-contrast imagining by orders of magnitude on the ELTs. According classical information theory, the optimal…

FIRST, the Fibered Imager foR a Single Telescope instrument, is an ultra-high angular resolution spectro-imager, able to deliver calibrated images and measurements beyond the telescope diffraction limit, a regime that is out of reach for…

In an effort to transcend the limitations of differential imaging of exoplanets in the era of extremely large telescopes (ELTs), the first paper in this series established a rigorous, fully polarimetric framework for determining the science…

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…

Small-angle coronagraphy is technically and scientifically appealing because it enables the use of smaller telescopes, allows covering wider wavelength ranges, and potentially increases the yield and completeness of circumstellar…

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.…

We report laboratory results of a coronagraphic test bench to assess the intensity reduction differences between a "Gaussian" tapered focal plane coronagraphic mask and a classical hard-edged "Top Hat" function mask at Extreme Adaptive…

High-contrast imaging for the detection and characterization of exoplanets relies on the instrument's capability to block out the light of the host star. Some current post-processing methods for calibrating out the residual speckles use…

Commonly used wavefront sensors, the Shack Hartmann wavefront sensor and the pyramid wavefront sensor, for example, have large dynamic range or high sensitivity, trading one regime for the other. A new type of wavefront sensor is being…

Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensors (SHWS) are generally used to measure the wavefront curvature of light beams. Measurement accuracy and the sensitivity of these sensors are important factors for better wavefront sensing. In this study, we…

It has previously been demonstrated in both simulation and experiment that well aligned remote focusing microscopes exhibit residual spherical aberration outside the focal plane. In this work, compensation of the residual spherical…

Direct imaging of exoplanet systems requires the use of coronagraphs to reach high contrast levels (10^-8 to 10^-11) at small angular separations (0.1"). However, the performance of these devices is drastically limited by aberrations (in…

High-contrast imaging from space must overcome two major noise sources to successfully detect a terrestrial planet angularly close to its parent star: photon noise from diffracted star light, and speckle noise from star light scattered by…

The evanescent wave coronagraph uses the principle of frustrated total internal reflection (FTIR) to suppress the light coming from the star and study its close environment. Its focal plane mask is composed of a lens and a prism placed in…

Imaging terrestrial exoplanets around nearby stars is a formidable technical challenge, requiring the development of coronagraphs to suppress the stellar halo of diffracted light at the location of the planet. In this review, we derive the…

We present significant upgrades to the VAMPIRES instrument, a visible-light (600 nm to 800 nm) high-contrast imaging polarimeter integrated within SCExAO on the Subaru telescope. Key enhancements include new qCMOS detectors, coronagraphs,…

Laser guide star (LGS) wave-front sensing (LGSWFS) is a key element of tomographic adaptive optics system. However, when considering Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) scales, the LGS spot elongation becomes so large that it challenges the…

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…

The next generation of giant ground and space telescopes will have the light-collecting power to detect and characterize potentially habitable terrestrial exoplanets using high-contrast imaging for the first time. This will only be…

The limits for adaptive-optics (AO) imaging at high contrast and high resolution are determined by residual phase errors from non-common-path aberrations not sensed by the wavefront sensor, especially for integral field spectrographs, where…