Abstract
For the imaging of faint companions, phase mask coronagraphy has the dual advantages of a small inner working angle and high throughput. This paper summarizes our recent work in developing phase masks and in demonstrating their capabilities at JPL. Four-quadrant phase masks have been manufactured at JPL by means of both evaporation and etching, and we have been developing liquid crystal vortex phase masks in partnership with a commercial vendor. Both types of mask have been used with our extreme adaptive optics well-corrected subaperture at Palomar to detect known brown dwarf companions as close as ~ 2.5 λ/D to stars. Moreover, our recent vortex masks perform very well in laboratory tests, with a demonstrated infrared contrast of about 10^(−6) at 3 λ/D, and contrasts of a few 10^(−7) with an initial optical wavelength device. The demonstrated performance already meets the needs of ground-based extreme adaptive optics coronagraphy, and further planned improvements are aimed at reaching the 10^(−10) contrast needed for terrestrial exoplanet detection with a space-based coronagraph.
Highlights
The detection of very faint planets near much brighter stars calls for the suppression of starlight
For the imaging of faint companions, phase mask coronagraphy has the dual advantages of a small inner working angle and high throughput
Starlight suppression with phase mask coronagraphy has the advantage of employing transparent focal plane masks, which results in small inner working angles, high throughput and a clear off-axis field of view
Summary
The detection of very faint planets near much brighter stars calls for the suppression of starlight. For the imaging of faint companions, phase mask coronagraphy has the dual advantages of a small inner working angle and high throughput. This paper summarizes our recent work in developing phase masks and in demonstrating their capabilities at JPL.
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