Shaped pupil design for future space telescopes

Several years ago at Princeton we invented a technique to optimize shaped pupil (SP) coronagraphs for any telescope aperture. In the last year, our colleagues at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) invented a method to produce these non-freestanding mask designs on a substrate. These two advances allowed us to design SPs for two possible space telescopes for the direct imaging of exoplanets and disks, WFIRST-AFTA and Exo-C. In December 2013, the SP was selected along with the hybrid Lyot coronagraph for placement in the AFTA coronagraph instrument. Here we describe our designs and analysis of the SPs being manufactured and tested in the High Contrast Imaging Testbed at JPL.We also explore hybrid SP coronagraph designs for AFTA that would improve performance with minimal or no changes to the optical layout. These possibilities include utilizing a Lyot stop after the focal plane mask or applying large, static deformations to the deformable mirrors (nominally for wavefront correction) already in the system.

[1]  N. J. Kasdin,et al.  Optimal pupil apodizations for arbitrary apertures , 2011 .

[2]  N. Jeremy Kasdin,et al.  Demonstration of high contrast in 10% broadband light with the shaped pupil coronagraph , 2007, SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications.

[3]  Olivier Guyon,et al.  High contrast internal and external coronagraph masks produced by various techniques , 2013, Optics & Photonics - Optical Engineering + Applications.

[4]  James Roger P. Angel,et al.  A high-contrast coronagraph for the MMT using phase apodization: design and observations at 5 microns and 2 λ/D radius , 2006, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[5]  Johanan L. Codona,et al.  Imaging extrasolar planets by stellar halo suppression in separately corrected color bands , 2004 .

[6]  Alexis Carlotti,et al.  Shaped pupil coronagraphy with WFIRST-AFTA , 2013, Optics & Photonics - Optical Engineering + Applications.

[7]  Brian J. Bauman,et al.  The Gemini Planet Imager coronagraph testbed , 2009, Optical Engineering + Applications.

[8]  R. Soummer.  Apodized Pupil Lyot Coronagraphs for Arbitrary Telescope Apertures , 2004, astro-ph/0412221.

[9]  Alexis Carlotti,et al.  Hybrid coronagraphic design: optimization of complex apodizers , 2013, Optics & Photonics - Optical Engineering + Applications.

[10]  R. Vanderbei.  Fast Fourier optimization Sparsity matters , 2011 .

[11]  L. Pueyo,et al.  Optimal dark hole generation via two deformable mirrors with stroke minimization. , 2009, Applied optics.

[12]  O. Guyon.  Phase-induced amplitude apodization of telescope pupils for extrasolar terrestrial planet imaging , 2003, astro-ph/0301190.

[13]  L. Pueyo,et al.  HIGH-CONTRAST IMAGING WITH AN ARBITRARY APERTURE: ACTIVE COMPENSATION OF APERTURE DISCONTINUITIES , 2012, 1211.6112.

[14]  Alexis Carlotti,et al.  Three possible types of coronagraphs for the E-ELT PCS instrument , 2014, Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation.

[15]  Laurent Pueyo,et al.  High-contrast imaging with an arbitrary aperture: active correction of aperture discontinuities , 2013, Optics & Photonics - Optical Engineering + Applications.

[16]  J. Codona.  Phase Apodization Coronagraphy , 2007 .

[17]  C. Dorrer,et al.  Design, analysis, and testing of a microdot apodizer for the Apodized Pupil Lyot Coronagraph , 2008, 0810.5678.

[18]  J. Green,et al.  Reflectivity and optical surface height requirements in a broadband coronagraph. 1. Contrast floor due to controllable spatial frequencies. , 2006, Applied optics.

[19]  Julien H. Girard,et al.  An apodizing phase plate coronagraph for VLT/NACO , 2010, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.