Achromatic dual-zone phase mask stellar coronagraph

This paper presents a generalization of the Roddier & Roddier Phase Mask coronagraph for polychromatic obser- vations. It is shown that using a dual-zone phase mask, combined with complex apodization, both phase and size chromatism can be compensated simultaneously to produce high extinction of a point source over large bandwidths, for example the entire K band with a residual integrated starlight of 3.2 × 10 −4 and a star intensity level of 10 −6 at an angular separation of 3λ/D. Other advantages of the proposed technique include the compatibility with centrally obscured telescopes, absence of blind axes and no symmetrization of the images.

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