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Optical stellar interferometers have demonstrated milli-arcsecond resolution with few apertures spaced hundreds of meters apart. To obtain rich direct images, many apertures will be needed, for a better sampling of the incoming wavefront.…
Optical interferometers increasingly use single-mode fibers as spatial filters to convert varying wavefront distortion into intensity fluctuations which can be monitored for accurate calibration of fringe amplitudes. Here I propose using an…
Although many exoplanets have been indirectly detected over the last years, direct imaging of them with ground-based telescopes remains challenging. In the presence of atmospheric fluctuations, it is ambitious to resolve the high brightness…
Exoplanet imaging uses coronagraphs to block out the bright light from a star, allowing astronomers to observe the much fainter light from planets orbiting the star. However, these instruments are heavily impacted by small wavefront…
Many high contrast coronagraph designs have recently been proposed. In this paper, their suitability for direct imaging of extrasolar terrestrial planets is reviewed. We also develop a linear-algebra based model of coronagraphy that can…
We present the final results of the Apodized Pupil Lyot Coronagraph (APLC) on the High-contrast imager for Complex Aperture Telescopes (HiCAT) testbed, under NASA's Strategic Astrophysics Technology program. The HiCAT testbed was developed…
Imaging polarimetry is a powerful tool for detecting and characterizing exoplanets and circumstellar environments. Polarimetry allows a separation of the light coming from an unpolarized source such as a star and the polarized source such…
Infrared heterodyne interferometry has been proposed as a practical alternative for recombining a large number of telescopes over kilometric baselines in the mid-infrared. However, the current limited correlation capacities impose strong…
Highest resolution imaging in astronomy is achieved by interferometry, connecting telescopes over increasingly longer distances, and at successively shorter wavelengths. Here, we present the first diffraction-limited images in visual light,…
The band-limited coronagraph is a nearly ideal concept that theoretically enables perfect cancellation of all the light of an on-axis source. Over the past years, several prototypes have been developed and tested in the laboratory, and more…
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…
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 direct detection of extrasolar planets by imaging means is limited by the large flux of light from the host star being scattered into the region of interest by a variety of processes, including diffraction. Coronagraphs are devices that…
The so-called indentation stiffness tomography technique for detecting the interior mechanical properties of an elastic sample with an inhomogeneity is analyzed in the framework of the asymptotic modeling approach under the assumption of…
High contrast coronagraphic imaging is challenging for telescopes with central obstructions and thick spider vanes, such as the Subaru Telescope. We present in this paper the first laboratory demonstration of a high efficiency PIAA-type…
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…
Future optical interferometric instrumentation mainly relies on the availability of an efficient cophasing system: once available, what has so far postponed the relevance of direct imaging with an interferometer will vanish. This paper…
The Exo-Planet Imaging Camera and Spectrograph (EPICS) for the future 42-meter European-Extremely Large Telescope, will enable direct images, and spectra for both young and old Jupiter-mass planets in the infrared. To achieve the required…
Several concepts now exist for small, space-based missions to directly characterize exoplanets in reflected light. Here, we develop an instrument noise model suitable for studying the spectral characterization potential of a…
Polarimetric imaging is one of the most effective techniques for high-contrast imaging and characterization of circumstellar environments. These environments can be characterized through direct-imaging polarimetry at near-infrared…