Hybrid Lyot coronagraph for wide-field infrared survey telescope-astrophysics focused telescope assets: occulter fabrication and high contrast narrowband testbed demonstration

Byoung-Joon Seo; Brian L. Gordon; Brian Kern; Andreas C. Kuhnert; Dwight C. Moody; Richard E. Muller; Ilya Poberezhskiy; John T. Trauger; Daniel W. Wilson

doi:10.1117/1.JATIS.2.1.011019

8 March 2016 Hybrid Lyot coronagraph for wide-field infrared survey telescope-astrophysics focused telescope assets: occulter fabrication and high contrast narrowband testbed demonstration

Byoung-Joon Seo, Brian L. Gordon, Brian Kern, Andreas C. Kuhnert, Dwight C. Moody, Richard E. Muller, Ilya Poberezhskiy, John T. Trauger, Daniel W. Wilson

Author Affiliations +

Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems, Vol. 2, Issue 1, 011019 (March 2016). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JATIS.2.1.011019

Abstract

Hybrid Lyot coronagraph (HLC) is one of the two operating modes of the WFIRST-AFTA coronagraph instrument. It produces starlight suppression over the full 360-deg annular region and thus is particularly suitable to improve the discovery space around WFIRST-AFTA targets. Since being selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in December 2013, the coronagraph technology is being matured to technology readiness level 5 by September 2016. We present the progress of HLC key component fabrication and testbed demonstrations with the WFIRST-AFTA pupil. For the first time, a circular HLC occulter mask consisting of metal and dielectric layers is fabricated and characterized. Wavefront control using two deformable mirrors is successfully demonstrated in a vacuum testbed with narrowband light (<1-nm bandwidth at 516 nm) to obtain repeatable convergence below 8×10−⁹ mean contrast in the 360-deg dark hole with a working angle between 3λ/D and 9λ/D with arbitrary polarization. We detail the hardware and software used in the testbed, the results, and the associated analysis.

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Byoung-Joon Seo, Brian L. Gordon, Brian Kern, Andreas C. Kuhnert, Dwight C. Moody, Richard E. Muller, Ilya Poberezhskiy, John T. Trauger, and Daniel W. Wilson "Hybrid Lyot coronagraph for wide-field infrared survey telescope-astrophysics focused telescope assets: occulter fabrication and high contrast narrowband testbed demonstration," Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems 2(1), 011019 (8 March 2016). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JATIS.2.1.011019

Published: 8 March 2016

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