8 April 2023 Laboratory demonstration of the wrapped staircase scalar vortex coronagraph
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Abstract

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 2 × 10 − 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 3.2 × 10 − 8 in monochromatic light and 2.2 × 10 − 7 across a 10% bandwidth.

© 2023 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)
Niyati Desai, Garreth J. Ruane, Jorge D. Llop-Sayson, Arielle Betrou-Cantou, Axel Potier, A.J. Eldorado Riggs, Eugene Serabyn, and Dimitri P. Mawet "Laboratory demonstration of the wrapped staircase scalar vortex coronagraph," Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems 9(2), 025001 (8 April 2023). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JATIS.9.2.025001
Received: 11 January 2023; Accepted: 24 March 2023; Published: 8 April 2023
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CITATIONS
Cited by 5 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Scalable video coding

Coronagraphy

Design and modelling

Spiral phase plates

Exoplanets

Wavefronts

Colorimetry

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