Directly constraining low-order aberration sensitivities in the WFIRST coronagraph design

A.J. Eldorado Riggs; Garreth Ruane; Brian D. Kern

doi:10.1117/12.2529588

9 September 2019 Directly constraining low-order aberration sensitivities in the WFIRST coronagraph design

A.J. Eldorado Riggs, Garreth Ruane, Brian D. Kern

Proceedings Volume 11117, Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets IX; 111170F (2019) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2529588
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2019, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

To image and spectrally characterize exoplanets in the coming decades, coronagraphs are being developed for several high-contrast, space-based mission concepts. The first planned mission is the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) Coronagraph Instrument (CGI), which will demonstrate key coronagraphic technologies for the first time in space. Early research on WFIRST coronagraph designs focused on overcoming diffraction from the large pupil obscurations. Our latest work has been to optimize coronagraphs at the system level, making them more robust to low-order aberrations from telescope dynamics and polarization aberrations. In this paper, we show how to modify coronagraph optimization formulations to directly suppress sensitivities to low-order Zernike modes, in particular tip/tilt. We find and characterize the trade between throughput and tip/tilt sensitivity for shaped pupil Lyot coronagraphs. For coronagraph designs using deformable mirrors, we find that tip/tilt sensitivity can be improved by one to two orders of magnitude at small working angles without sacrificing any throughput. These results may help WFIRST to overcome residual pointing jitter from its reaction wheels and future large-aperture observatories to be less sensitive to resolved stellar diameters.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

A.J. Eldorado Riggs, Garreth Ruane, and Brian D. Kern "Directly constraining low-order aberration sensitivities in the WFIRST coronagraph design", Proc. SPIE 11117, Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets IX, 111170F (9 September 2019); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2529588

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