Stochastic Speckle Discrimination with Time-Tagged Photon Lists: Digging Below the Speckle Noise Floor

Abstract

We present an algorithm that uses the distribution of photon arrival times to distinguish speckles from incoherent sources, like planets and disks, in high contrast images. Using simulated data, we show that our approach can overcome the noise limit from fluctuating speckle intensity. The algorithm is likely to be most advantageous when a coronagraph limits the coherent diffraction pattern in the image plane but the intensity is still strongly modulated by fast-timescale uncorrected stellar light, for example from atmospheric turbulence. These conditions are common at small inner working angles and will allow probing of exoplanet populations at smaller angular separations. The technique requires a fast science camera that can temporally resolve the speckle fluctuations, and the detection of many photons per speckle decorrelation time. Since the algorithm directly extracts the incoherent light, standard differential imaging post-processing techniques can be performed afterwards to further boost the signal.

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Cited by in corpus (9)

• The MKID Exoplanet Camera for Subaru SCExAO
• SCExAO/MEC and CHARIS Discovery of a Low Mass, 6 AU-Separation Companion to HIP 109427 using Stochastic Speckle Discrimination and High-Contrast Spectroscopy
• Millisecond Exoplanet Imaging, I: Method and Simulation Results
• Probing Photon Statistics in Adaptive Optics Images with SCExAO/MEC
• Speckle Space-Time Covariance in High-Contrast Imaging
• Fast-Cadence High-Contrast Imaging with Information Field Theory
• First Principle Simulator of a Stochastically Varying Image Plane for Photon-Counting High Contrast Applications
• The Mysterious Lives Of Speckles. I. Residual atmospheric speckle lifetimes in ground-based coronagraphs
• Optical and Near-IR Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) in the 2020s