Shaped pupil Lyot coronagraphs: high-contrast solutions for restricted focal planes

Neil T. Zimmerman; A. J. Eldorado Riggs; N. Jeremy Kasdin; Alexis Carlotti; Robert J. Vanderbei

doi:10.1117/1.JATIS.2.1.011012

14 January 2016 Shaped pupil Lyot coronagraphs: high-contrast solutions for restricted focal planes

Neil T. Zimmerman, A. J. Eldorado Riggs, N. Jeremy Kasdin, Alexis Carlotti, Robert J. Vanderbei

Author Affiliations +

Funded by: NASA Technology Development for Exoplanet Missions (TDEM), NASA Technology Development for Exoplanet Missions, NASA, NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship

Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems, Vol. 2, Issue 1, 011012 (January 2016). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JATIS.2.1.011012

Abstract

Coronagraphs of the apodized pupil and shaped pupil varieties use the Fraunhofer diffraction properties of amplitude masks to create regions of high contrast in the vicinity of a target star. Here we present a hybrid coronagraph architecture in which a binary, hard-edged shaped pupil mask replaces the gray, smooth apodizer of the apodized pupil Lyot coronagraph (APLC). For any contrast and bandwidth goal in this configuration, as long as the prescribed region of contrast is restricted to a finite area in the image, a shaped pupil is the apodizer with the highest transmission. We relate the starlight cancellation mechanism to that of the conventional APLC. We introduce a new class of solutions in which the amplitude profile of the Lyot stop, instead of being fixed as a padded replica of the telescope aperture, is jointly optimized with the apodizer. Finally, we describe shaped pupil Lyot coronagraph (SPLC) designs for the baseline architecture of the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope–Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets (WFIRST-AFTA) coronagraph. These SPLCs help to enable two scientific objectives of the WFIRST-AFTA mission: (1) broadband spectroscopy to characterize exoplanet atmospheres in reflected starlight and (2) debris disk imaging.

CC BY: © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.

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Neil T. Zimmerman, A. J. Eldorado Riggs, N. Jeremy Kasdin, Alexis Carlotti, and Robert J. Vanderbei "Shaped pupil Lyot coronagraphs: high-contrast solutions for restricted focal planes," Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems 2(1), 011012 (14 January 2016). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JATIS.2.1.011012

Published: 14 January 2016

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