Estimation of chromatic errors from broadband images for high contrast imaging

Dan Sirbu; Ruslan Belikov

doi:10.1117/12.2188740

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16 September 2015 Estimation of chromatic errors from broadband images for high contrast imaging

Dan Sirbu, Ruslan Belikov

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Proceedings Volume 9605, Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets VII; 96050O (2015) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2188740
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2015, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Usage of an internal coronagraph with an adaptive optical system for wavefront correction for direct imaging of exoplanets is currently being considered for many mission concepts, including as an instrument addition to the WFIRST-AFTA mission to follow the James Web Space Telescope. The main technical challenge associated with direct imaging of exoplanets with an internal coronagraph is to effectively control both the diffraction and scattered light from the star so that the dim planetary companion can be seen. For the deformable mirror (DM) to recover a dark hole region with sufficiently high contrast in the image plane, wavefront errors are usually estimated using probes on the DM. To date, most broadband lab demonstrations use narrowband filters to estimate the chromaticity of the wavefront error, but this reduces the photon flux per filter and requires a filter system. Here, we propose a method to estimate the chromaticity of wavefront errors using only a broadband image. This is achieved by using special DM probes that have sufficient chromatic diversity. As a case example, we simulate the retrieval of the spectrum of the central wavelength from broadband images for a simple shaped- pupil coronagraph with a conjugate DM and compute the resulting estimation error.

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Dan Sirbu and Ruslan Belikov "Estimation of chromatic errors from broadband images for high contrast imaging", Proc. SPIE 9605, Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets VII, 96050O (16 September 2015); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2188740

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