Laboratory demonstration of the wrapped staircase scalar vortex coronagraph
Autor: | Niyati Desai, Garreth Ruane, Jorge Llop-Sayson, Arielle Betrou-Cantou, Axel Potier, A. J. Eldorado Riggs, Eugene Serabyn, Dimitri Mawet |
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Rok vydání: | 2023 |
Předmět: |
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Space and Planetary Science Control and Systems Engineering Mechanical Engineering FOS: Physical sciences Astronomy and Astrophysics Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics Instrumentation Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) Electronic Optical and Magnetic Materials Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics |
DOI: | 10.48550/arxiv.2305.05076 |
Popis: | Of the over 5000 exoplanets that have been detected, only about a dozen have ever been directly imaged. Earth-like exoplanets are on the order of 10 billion times fainter than their host star in visible and near-infrared, requiring a coronagraph instrument to block primary starlight and allow for the imaging of nearby orbiting planets. In the pursuit of direct imaging of exoplanets, scalar vortex coronagraphs (SVCs) are an attractive alternative to vector vortex coronagraphs (VVCs). VVCs have demonstrated 2e-9 raw contrast in broadband light but have several limitations due to their polarization properties. SVCs imprint the same phase ramp as VVCs on the incoming light and do not require polarization splitting, but they are inherently chromatic. Discretized phase ramp patterns such as a wrapped staircase help reduce SVC chromaticity and simulations show it outperforms a chromatic classical vortex in broadband light. We designed, fabricated, and tested a wrapped staircase SVC, and here we present the broadband characterization on the high contrast spectroscopy testbed. We also performed wavefront correction on the in-air coronagraph testbed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and achieved an average raw contrasts of 3.2e-8 in monochromatic light and 2.2e-7 across a 10% bandwidth. Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2212.02633 |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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