Related papers: The Phase Induced Amplitude Apodizer and Nuller --…
For the technology development of the mission EXCEDE (EXoplanetary Circumstellar Environments and Disk Explorer) - a 0.7 m telescope equipped with a Phase-Induced Amplitude Apodization Coronagraph (PIAA-C) and a 2000-element MEMS deformable…
Context. High contrast imaging has thoroughly combed through the limited search space accessible with first-generation ground-based adaptive optics instruments and the Hubble Space Telescope. Only a few objects were discovered, and many…
Specific high contrast imaging instruments are mandatory to characterize circumstellar disks and exoplanets around nearby stars. Coronagraphs are commonly used in these facilities to reject the diffracted light of an observed star and…
We propose a transmission-filter coronagraph for direct imaging of Jupiter-like exoplanets with ground-based telescopes. The coronagraph is based on a transmission filter that consists of finite number of transmission steps. A discrete…
The discovery of the exoplanet Proxima b highlights the potential for the coming generation of giant segmented mirror telescopes (GSMTs) to characterize terrestrial --- potentially habitable --- planets orbiting nearby stars with direct…
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…
Many lung diseases require detailed visualisation for accurate diagnosis and treatment. High-resolution computed tomography (CT) is the gold-standard technique for non-invasive lung disease detection, but it presents a risk to the patient…
We revive a cross-platform focal-plane wavefront sensing and control algorithm originally released in 1980 and show that it can provide significant contrast improvements over conventional control methods on coronagraphic instruments. Its…
High contrast coronagraphic imaging of the immediate surrounding of stars requires exquisite control of low-order wavefront aberrations, such as tip-tilt (pointing) and focus. We propose an accurate, efficient and easy to implement…
The vector-Apodizing Phase Plate (vAPP) is a pupil-plane coronagraph that manipulates phase to create dark holes in the stellar PSF. The phase is induced on the circular polarization states through the inherently achromatic geometric phase…
Exoplanet research is essential for understanding planetary formation and the potential for life beyond our solar system. The direct imaging method captures exoplanet light while minimizing light from the host star. This is conventionally…
As adaptive optics technology continues to improve, the stellar coronagraph will play an ever increasing role in ground-based high-contrast imaging observations. Though several different image masks exist for the most common type of…
The number of terrestrial exoplanets accessible to high-contrast coronagraphic imaging with large telescopes is limited by the smallest angular offset from bright stars at which coronagraphs can observe. However, it is possible to reach…
As the number of confirmed exoplanets continues to grow, there is an increased push to spectrally characterize them to determine their atmospheric composition, formation paths, rotation rates, and habitability. However, there is a large…
The estimation and compensation of quasi-static aberrations is mandatory to reach the ultimate performance of high-contrast imaging systems. COFFEE is a focal plane wave-front sensing method that consists in the extension of phase diversity…
We use observations with the infrared-optimized MagAO system and Clio camera in 3.9 $\mu$m light to place stringent mass constraints on possible undetected companions to Sirius A. We suppress the light from Sirius A by imaging it through a…
In the context of high contrast imaging, we propose to evaluate the performance of the Apodized Pupil Lyot Coronagraph (APLC) working without Lyot Stop, namely Stop-less Lyot Coronagraph (SLLC). This coronagraph is a combination of an…
We present a publicly available software package developed for exploring apodized pupil Lyot coronagraph (APLC) solutions for various telescope architectures. In particular, the package optimizes the apodizer component of the APLC for a…
The Astro2020 decadal survey recommended an infrared, optical, ultra-violet (IR/O/UV) telescope with a $\sim$6~m inscribed diameter and equipped with a coronagraph instrument to directly image exoEarths in the habitable zone of their host…
The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is a flagship mission concept proposing to characterize earth-like exoplanets at high contrast with a coronagraph instrument. The most in-depth, validated contrast error budgets made to date have been…