Simulating the WFIRST coronagraph Integral Field Spectrograph

Abstract

A primary goal of direct imaging techniques is to spectrally characterize the atmospheres of planets around other stars at extremely high contrast levels. To achieve this goal, coronagraphic instruments have favored integral field spectrographs (IFS) as the science cameras to disperse the entire search area at once and obtain spectra at each location, since the planet position is not known a priori. These spectrographs are useful against confusion from speckles and background objects, and can also help in the speckle subtraction and wavefront control stages of the coronagraphic observation. We present a software package, the Coronagraph and Rapid Imaging Spectrograph in Python (crispy) to simulate the IFS of the WFIRST Coronagraph Instrument (CGI). The software propagates input science cubes using spatially and spectrally resolved coronagraphic focal plane cubes, transforms them into IFS detector maps and ultimately reconstructs the spatio-spectral input scene as a 3D datacube. Simulated IFS cubes can be used to test data extraction techniques, refine sensitivity analyses and carry out design trade studies of the flight CGI-IFS instrument. crispy is a publicly available Python package and can be adapted to other IFS designs.

15 pages

References in corpus (4)

• Exoplanet albedo spectra and colors as a function of planet phase, separation, and metallicity
• Photon counting strategies with low light level CCDs
• Technology advancement of the CCD201-20 EMCCD for the WFIRST coronagraph instrument: sensor characterization and radiation damage
• CCCP: A CCD Controller for Counting Photons

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Characterization of Exoplanet Atmospheres with the Optical Coronagraph on WFIRST
• WFIRST Coronagraph Technology Requirements: Status Update and Systems Engineering Approach
• Simulating Reflected Light Exoplanet Spectra of the Promising Direct Imaging Target, $\upsilon$ Andromedae d, with a New, Fast Sampling Method Using the Planetary Spectrum Generator
• Smartphone scene generator for efficient characterization of visible imaging detectors
• The Signal-to-Noise Ratio for Photon Counting After Photometric Corrections