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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…
Phase-mask coronagraphs are known to provide high contrast imaging capabilities while preserving a small inner working angle, which allows searching for exoplanets or circumstellar disks with smaller telescopes or at longer wavelengths. The…
Segmented telescopes are a possibility to enable large-aperture space telescopes for the direct imaging and spectroscopy of habitable worlds. However, the complexity of their aperture geometry, due to the central obstruction, support…
We present the monochromatic lab verification of the newly developed SCAR coronagraph that combines a phase plate (PP) in the pupil with a microlens-fed single-mode fiber array in the focal plane. The two SCAR designs that have been…
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…
The Project 1640 instrument on the 200-inch Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory is a coronagraphic instrument with an integral field spectrograph at the back end, designed to find young, self-luminous planets around nearby stars. To reach…
Using 2 aspheric mirrors, it is possible to apodize a telescope beam without losing light or angular resolution: the output beam is produced by ``remapping'' the entrance beam to produce the desired light intensity distribution in a new…
Direct imaging of exoplanets presents a formidable technical challenge owing to the small angular separation and high contrast between exoplanets and their host stars. High Dispersion Coronagraphy (HDC) is a pathway to achieve unprecedented…
In principle, suppression of on-axis stellar light by a coronagraph is easier on an unobscured aperture telescope than on one with an obscured aperture. Recent designs such as the apodized pupil Lyot coronagraph, the `band-limited' Lyot…
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 architecture of exoplanetary systems is relatively well known inward to 1 AU thanks to indirect techniques, which have allowed characterization of thousands of exoplanet orbits, masses and sometimes radii. The next step is the…
For direct imaging of exoplanets, Scalar Vortex Coronagraphs (SVCs) are an attractive alternative to the popularly used Vector Vortex Coronagraphs (VVCs). This is primarily because they are able to induce the same phase ramp regardless of…
We present an overview of the EXoplanetary Circumstellar Environments and Disk Explorer (EXCEDE), selected by NASA for technology development and maturation. EXCEDE will study the formation, evolution and architectures of exoplanetary…
Broadband coronagraphy with deep nulling and small inner working angle has the potential of delivering images and spectra of exoplanets and other faint objects. In recent years, many coronagraphic schemes have been proposed, the most…
The electric field conjugation (EFC) algorithm has shown promise for removing scattered starlight from high-contrast imaging measurements, both in numerical simulations and laboratory experiments. To prepare for the deployment of EFC using…
NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) concept and the 2020 Decadal Survey's recommendation to develop a large space telescope to "detect and characterize Earth-like extrasolar planets" requires new starlight suppression technologies to…
MICADO, the European Extremely Large Telescope first light imager will feature a dedicated high contrast imaging mode specifically designed for observing and characterizing exoplanets and circumstellar disks. Its improved sensitivity and…
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…
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…
Directly imaging and characterizing Earth-like exoplanets is a tremendously difficult instrumental challenge. Present coronagraphic systems have yet to achieve the required $10^{-10}$ broadband contrast in a laboratory environment, but…