Sparse wavefront control: A new approach to high-contrast imaging

Eduardo Bendek; Dan Sirbu; Christopher Henze; Ruslan Belikov; Thomas Milster; Emily Finan; Eugene Pluzhnik

doi:10.1117/12.2313963

6 July 2018 Sparse wavefront control: A new approach to high-contrast imaging

Eduardo Bendek, Dan Sirbu, Christopher Henze, Ruslan Belikov, Thomas Milster, Emily Finan, Eugene Pluzhnik

Proceedings Volume 10698, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2018: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave; 106981M (2018) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2313963
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2018, Austin, Texas, United States

Abstract

Current high-contrast imaging systems implement wavefront control using traditional deformable mirrors developed for atmospheric turbulence correction, which require large strokes, high-speed, and continuous phase correction. However, high-contrast imaging has different requirements. Thus, developing a specialized deformable mirror for this application able to meet the demanding requirements of future exoplanet imaging flagship missions is valuable for the exoplanet scientific community. In this paper, we propose a novel wavefront control approach, called Sparse Wave-Front Control (SWFC), which enables high-contrast imaging using sparse phase changes on the active surface re-directing coherent starlight to null speckles. To validate SWFC, we simulated a telescope equipped with a Phase Induced Amplitude Apodization (PIAA) coronagraph and a 100 by 100 actuator sparse Deformable Mirror to null speckles caused by the optical system aberrations. We modeled the mirror as a flat surface where narrow gaussian influence functions represent actuators. We performed wavefront control utilizing Electric Field Conjugation achieving 6.7e-11 mean contrast between 3 to 35λ/D in monochromatic light and 7.4e-11 in 10% broadband light. In the second part of this paper, we propose an approach to manufacture Sparse Deformable Mirrors utilizing photosensitive polymers, which could be placed below the mirror coating and can be photonically actuated by back illumination through the mirror substrate.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Eduardo Bendek, Dan Sirbu, Christopher Henze, Ruslan Belikov, Thomas Milster, Emily Finan, and Eugene Pluzhnik "Sparse wavefront control: A new approach to high-contrast imaging", Proc. SPIE 10698, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2018: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave, 106981M (6 July 2018); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2313963

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