Dark hole and planet detection: laboratory results using the self-coherent camera

摘要

Direct imaging and low-resolution spectroscopy of extrasolar planets are exciting but challenging scientific applications of coronagraphy. While the angular separation is well within the reach of actual telescope in thenear IR or visible, the planet-star contrast (from 10sup−6/sup to 10sup−10/sup) requires wavefront quality and stability hard to reach even with a well-polished space telescope. Several solutions have been proposed to tackle the speckle noise introduced by the residual optical defects. While some concepts rely only on active wavefront correctionusing deformable mirror, other techniques are based on post-processing and subtract a reference image recordedsometimes simultaneously with the science image. One interesting solution is to choose a concept that allowsboth active correction and post-processing of high contrast coronagraphic images. This is the case of the SelfCoherent Camera (SCC), which has been proposed for the project of space coronagraph SPICES and for theground-based planet finder EPICS studied for the European Extremely Large Telescope. After recalling the SCCprinciple, we present both monochromatic and modest bandwidth (2%) experimental results of Dark Hole in thefocal plane using a SCC. Example of a post-processing result with SCC is also given to emphasize the interestof combining it with active correction.© (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.