Origin of the asymmetry of the wind driven halo observed in high contrast images

Abstract

The latest generation of high contrast instruments dedicated to exoplanets and circumstellar disks imaging are equipped with extreme adaptive optics and coronagraphs to reach contrasts of up to 10^--4 at a few tenths of arc-seconds in the near infrared. The resulting image shows faint features, only revealed with this combination, such as the wind driven halo. The wind driven halo is due to the lag between the adaptive optics correction and the turbulence speed over the telescope pupil. However we observe an asymmetry of this wind driven halo that was not expected when the instrument was designed. In this letter, we describe and demonstrate the physical origin of this asymmetry and support our explanation by simulating the asymmetry with an end-to-end approach. From this work, we found out that the observed asymmetry is explained by the interference between the AO-lag error and scintillation effects, mainly originating from the fast jet stream layer located at about 12 km in altitude. Now identified and interpreted, this effect can be taken into account for further design of high contrast imaging simulators, next generation or upgrade of high contrast instruments, predictive control algorithms for adaptive optics or image post-processing techniques.

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• TRAP: A temporal systematics model for improved direct detection of exoplanets at small angular separations
• Towards on-sky adaptive optics control using reinforcement learning
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• Robustness of prediction for extreme adaptive optics systems under various observing conditions: An analysis using VLT/SPHERE adaptive optics data
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• PEPITO: atmospheric Profiling from short-Exposure focalPlane Images in seeing-limiTed mOde
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• Optimising reference library selection for reference-star differential imaging of discs with SPHERE/IRDIS