Broadband Vector Vortex Coronagraph Testing at NASA's High Contrast Imaging Testbed Facility

Abstract

The unparalleled theoretical performance of an ideal vector vortex coronagraph makes it one of the most promising technologies for directly imaging exoplanets with a future, off-axis space telescope. However, the image contrast required for observing the light reflected from Earth-sized planets ($\sim 10^{-10}$) has yet to be demonstrated in a laboratory setting. With recent advances in the manufacturing of liquid crystal vector vortex waveplates as well as system-level performance improvements on our testbeds, we have achieved raw contrast of 1.6$\times 10^{-9}$ and 5.9$\times 10^{-9}$ in 10% and 20% optical bandwidths, respectively, averaged over 3-10$\lambda /D$ separations on one side of the pseudo-star. The former represents a factor of 10 improvement over the previously reported performance. We show experimental comparisons of the contrast achieved as a function of spectral bandwidth. We provide estimates of the limiting error terms and discuss the improvements needed to close the gap in contrast performance required for future exoplanet imaging space telescopes.

To appear in the Proceedings of the SPIE

References in corpus (2)

• The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx) Mission Concept Study Final Report
• Experimental analysis of the achromatic performance of a vector vortex coronagraph

Cited by in corpus (8)

• End-to-end numerical modeling of the Roman Space Telescope coronagraph
• Laboratory demonstration of the wrapped staircase scalar vortex coronagraph
• High-order wavefront sensing and control for the Roman Coronagraph Instrument (CGI): architecture and measured performance
• Topological Designs for Scalar Vortex Coronagraphs
• Benefits of adding radial phase dimples on scalar coronagraph phase masks
• Random Vibration Testing of Microelectromechanical Deformable Mirrors for Space-based High-Contrast Imaging
• Comparative laboratory study of electric field conjugation algorithms
• Active rejection-enhancement of spectrally adaptive liquid crystal geometric phase vortex coronagraphs