Related papers: Millisecond Exoplanet Imaging, I: Method and Simul…
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…
We present a solution to obtain a high-resolution image of a wide field with the central source removed by destructive interference. The wide-field image is created by aperture synthesis with a rotating sparse array of telescopes in space.…
All coronagraphic instruments for exoplanet high-contrast imaging need wavefront correction systems to reject optical aberrations and create sufficiently dark holes. Since the most efficient wavefront correction algorithms (controllers and…
The discovery of habitable exoplanets has long been a heated topic in astronomy. Traditional methods for exoplanet identification include the wobble method, direct imaging, gravitational microlensing, etc., which not only require a…
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…
Direct observation of extra-solar planets (exoplanets) is essential to understand how planetary systems were born, how they evolve, and ultimately, to identify biological signatures on these planets. However, the enormous contrast in flux…
We propose a method for observing transiting exoplanets with near-infrared high-resolution spectrometers. We aim to create a robust data analysis method for recovering atmospheric transmission spectra from transiting exoplanets over a wide…
We present a procedure for calculating expected exoplanet imaging yields, which explicitly separates the effects of instrument performance from assumptions of planet distributions. This `depth of search' approach allows for fast…
Space-based direct imaging provides prospects for detection and spectral characterization of exoplanets at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. Integral field spectrographs (IFS) have been historically baselined for these mission…
High-contrast imaging has been used to discover and characterize dozens of exoplanets to date. The primary limiting performance factor for these instruments is contrast, the ratio of exoplanet to host star brightness that an instrument can…
Direct imaging of exoplanets or circumstellar disk material requires extreme contrast at the 10-6 to 10-12 levels at < 100 mas angular separation from the star. Focal-plane mask (FPM) coronagraphic imaging has played a key role in this…
Aims: We predict the exoplanet yield of a space-based mid-infrared nulling interferometer using Monte Carlo simulations. We quantify the number and properties of detectable exoplanets and identify those target stars that have the highest or…
Studies of future space- and ground-based exoplanet surveys often rely on models of planetary systems to simulate instrument response, estimate scientific yields, perform trade analyses, and study efficient observation strategies. Until…
The Mid-Infrared instrument (MIRI) on board the James Webb Space Telescope will perform the first ever characterization of young giant exoplanets observed by direct imaging in the 5-28 microns spectral range. This wavelength range is key…
WFIRST-CGI is a NASA technology demonstration mission that is charged with demonstrating key technologies for future exo-Earth imaging missions in space. In the process, it will obtain images and low-resolution spectra of a handful to a…
Orbital monitoring of exoplanetary and stellar systems is fundamental for analysing their architecture, dynamical stability and evolution, and mechanisms of formation. Current high-contrast extreme-adaptive optics imagers like SPHERE, GPI,…
The unparalleled theoretical performance of an ideal vector vortex coronagraph makes it one of the most promising technologies for directly imaging exoplanets with a future, off-axis space telescope. However, the image contrast required for…
A key challenge of high contrast imaging (HCI) is to differentiate a speckle from an exoplanet signal. The sources of speckles are a combination of atmospheric residuals and aberrations in the non-common path. Those non-common path…
Radial velocity surveys for extra-solar planets generally require substantial amounts of large telescope time in order to monitor a sufficient number of stars. Two of the aspects which can limit such surveys are the single-object…
High-contrast imaging surveys for exoplanet detection have shown giant planets at large separations to be rare. It is important to push towards detections at smaller separations, the part of the parameter space containing most planets. The…