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The Phase-Induced Amplitude Apodization (PIAA) coronagraph is a high performance coronagraph concept able to work at small angular separation with little loss in throughput. We present results obtained with a laboratory PIAA system…
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.…
Direct imaging of Earth-like planets is one of the main science cases for the next generation of extremely large telescopes. This is very challenging due to the star-planet contrast that must be overcome. Most current high-contrast imaging…
Coronagraph designs which use photonic integrated circuits have the highest theoretical throughput for off-axis signals, and therefore the highest potential exoplanet yield for future high-contrast direct imaging campaigns. Using the…
We analyse the fundamental limitations for the detection of extraterrestrial planets with Extremely Large Telescopes. For this task, a coronagraphic device combined to a very high order wavefront correction system is required but not…
Direct imaging instruments have the spatial resolution to resolve exoplanets from their host star. This enables direct characterization of the exoplanets atmosphere, but most direct imaging instruments do not have spectrographs with high…
The last few years have seen a variety of new image mask designs for diffraction-limited coronagraphy. Could there still be useful designs as yet undiscovered? To begin to answer this question, I survey and unify the Fraunhofer theory of…
The optical vortex coronagraph (OVC) is one of the promising ways for direct imaging exoplanets because of its small inner working angle and high throughput. This paper presents the design and laboratory demonstration performance at 633nm…
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…
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 faint objects, such as exoplanets or disks, around nearby stars is extremely challenging because host star images are dominated by the telescope diffraction pattern. Using a coronagraph is an efficient solution for removing…
Context. Direct imaging of exoplanets takes advantage of state-of-the-art adaptive optics (AO) systems, coronagraphy, and post-processing techniques. Coronagraphs attenuate starlight to mitigate the unfavorable flux ratio between an…
Future large space- or ground-based telescopes will offer the resolution and sensitivity to probe the habitable zone of a large sample of nearby stars for exo-Earth imaging. To this end, such facilities are expected to be equipped with a…
Less than 3% of the known exoplanets were directly imaged for two main reasons. They are angularly very close to their parent star, which is several magnitudes brighter. Direct imaging of exoplanets thus requires a dedicated instrumentation…
Direct detection is a very promising field in exoplanet science. It allows the detection of companions with large separation and allows their spectral analysis. A few planets have already been detected and are under spectral analysis. But…
The next generation of ground-based instruments aims to break through the knowledge we have on exoplanets by imaging circumstellar environments always closer to the stars. However, direct imaging requires an AO system and high-contrast…
The 2020 Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics tasked future space observatories with the goal of detecting and characterizing a large sample of Earth-like exoplanets. To achieve this, these observatories will require coronagraphs…
We have reported previously on a new method we are developing for using image-based information to improve global coronal magnetic field models. In that work we presented early tests of the method which proved its capability to improve…
Context. In the context of direct imaging of exoplanets, coronagraphs are commonly proposed to reach the required very high contrast levels. However, wavefront aberrations induce speckles in their focal plane and limit their performance.…
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…