Related papers: The Dispersion Leverage Coronagraph (DLC): A nulli…
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman), under development by NASA, will investigate possible causes for the phenomenon of dark energy and detect and characterize extra-solar planets. The 2.4 m space telescope has two main…
We present the SPICA Coronagraphic Instrument (SCI), which has been designed for a concentrated study of extra-solar planets (exoplanets). SPICA mission provides us with a unique opportunity to make high contrast observations because of its…
Direct imaging of exoplanets requires the detection of very faint objects orbiting close to very bright stars. In this context, the SPICES mission was proposed to the European Space Agency for planet characterization at visible wavelength.…
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…
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Coronagraph Instrument will enable the polarimetric imaging of debris disks and inner dust belts in the optical and near-infrared wavelengths, in addition to the high-contrast polarimetric imaging and…
A single-order transmission diffraction grating based on dispersion engineered all-dielectric metasurfaces is proposed and its wavelength discriminating properties have been theoretically described and confirmed using numerical simulations.…
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 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…
An LSST-like survey of the Galactic plane (deep images every 3-4 days) could probe the Galactic distribution of planets by two distinct methods: gravitational microlensing of planets beyond the snow line and transits by planets very close…
The Keck Planet Imager and Characterizer (KPIC) is a purpose-built instrument for high-dispersion coronagraphy in the K and L bands on Keck. This instrument will provide the first high resolution (R$>$30,000) spectra of known directly…
This paper presents a conceptual design for a spectrometer designed specifically for characterizing transiting exoplanets with space-borne infrared telescopes. The design adopting cross-dispersion is intended to be simple, compact, highly…
Earlier apodized-pupil Lyot coronagraphs (APLC) have been studied and developed to enable high-contrast imaging for exoplanet detection and characterization with present-day ground-based telescopes. With the current interest in the…
Discovering exoplanets in orbit around distant stars via direct imaging is fundamentally impeded by the combined effect of optical diffraction and photon shot noise under extreme star-planet contrast. Coronagraphs strive to increase the…
CONTEXT: The four-quadrant phase mask stellar coronagraph, introduced by D. Rouan et al., is capable of achieving very high dynamical range imaging and was studied in the context of the direct detection of extra-solar planets. Achromatic…
We show that space-based telescopes such as the proposed Terrestrial Planet Finder Coronagraph will be able to detect the light scattered by the interstellar grains along lines of sight passing near stars in our Galaxy. The relative flux of…
We report in this paper the test of a plane holographic optical element to be used as an aberration-corrected grating for a slitless spectrograph, inserted in a convergent telescope beam. Our long term objective is the optimisation of a…
Several recent designs for planet-finding telescopes use coronagraphs operating at visible wavelengths to suppress starlight along the telescope's optical axis while transmitting any off-axis light from circumstellar material. We describe a…
So far, most of the about 5700 exoplanets have been discovered mainly with radial velocity and transit methods. These techniques are sensitive to planets in close orbits, not being able to probe large star--planet separations. $\mu$-lensing…
One of the biggest challenges associated with a nulling interferometer-based approach to detecting extra-solar Earth-like planets comes from the extremely stringent requirements of pathlength, polarization and amplitude matching in the…
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…