Single-shot focal plane wavefront sensing with the spatially-clipped self-coherent camera

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Liberman, Joshua, Haffert, Sebastiaan Y., Males, Jared R., Derby, Kevin, Douglas, Ewan S.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866918135619125248
author Liberman, Joshua
Haffert, Sebastiaan Y.
Males, Jared R.
Derby, Kevin
Douglas, Ewan S.
author_facet Liberman, Joshua
Haffert, Sebastiaan Y.
Males, Jared R.
Derby, Kevin
Douglas, Ewan S.
contents The Habitable Worlds Observatory requires active speckle suppression to directly image Earth-like exoplanets. Focal plane wavefront sensing and control allows us to detect, and subsequently remove, time-varying speckles through measurements of the electric field. Two measurement-based wavefront sensing approaches are pairwise probing (PWP) and the self-coherent camera (SCC). However, the PWP technique is time-consuming, requiring at least 4 images and reducing the speed at which aberrations can be eliminated. In the SCC, a coronagraph mask diffracts light outside of the Lyot stop, where it is filtered with a pinhole. The filtered light creates a reference beam, interfering with speckles that leak through the coronagraph. The classic implementation of the SCC only works over small spectral bandwidths and needs significantly oversized optics which limits its implementation. We propose a new variant, the Spatially-Clipped Self-Coherent Camera (SCSCC). The SCSCC utilizes a pinhole placed closer to the Lyot Stop, reducing the overall beam footprint and boosting the sensor resolution. A knife-edge beam splitter downstream of the Lyot Stop splits the light into two channels: fringed and unfringed. This allows us to sense the wavefront with a single exposure. Time-varying aberrations are effectively frozen in place, making them easy to remove. We present monochromatic simulation results of the SCSCC in a sensing and control loop, demonstrating a normalized intensity of ~ 4 * 10^-10 in a 5-20 lambda/D dark hole. We find that wavefront control paired with the SCSCC achieves ~ 50x deeper contrast than that achieved with PWP in a temporally evolving speckle field. Our results make the SCSCC a valuable wavefront sensor concept for the upcoming Habitable World Observatory mission.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_03870
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Single-shot focal plane wavefront sensing with the spatially-clipped self-coherent camera
Liberman, Joshua
Haffert, Sebastiaan Y.
Males, Jared R.
Derby, Kevin
Douglas, Ewan S.
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
The Habitable Worlds Observatory requires active speckle suppression to directly image Earth-like exoplanets. Focal plane wavefront sensing and control allows us to detect, and subsequently remove, time-varying speckles through measurements of the electric field. Two measurement-based wavefront sensing approaches are pairwise probing (PWP) and the self-coherent camera (SCC). However, the PWP technique is time-consuming, requiring at least 4 images and reducing the speed at which aberrations can be eliminated. In the SCC, a coronagraph mask diffracts light outside of the Lyot stop, where it is filtered with a pinhole. The filtered light creates a reference beam, interfering with speckles that leak through the coronagraph. The classic implementation of the SCC only works over small spectral bandwidths and needs significantly oversized optics which limits its implementation. We propose a new variant, the Spatially-Clipped Self-Coherent Camera (SCSCC). The SCSCC utilizes a pinhole placed closer to the Lyot Stop, reducing the overall beam footprint and boosting the sensor resolution. A knife-edge beam splitter downstream of the Lyot Stop splits the light into two channels: fringed and unfringed. This allows us to sense the wavefront with a single exposure. Time-varying aberrations are effectively frozen in place, making them easy to remove. We present monochromatic simulation results of the SCSCC in a sensing and control loop, demonstrating a normalized intensity of ~ 4 * 10^-10 in a 5-20 lambda/D dark hole. We find that wavefront control paired with the SCSCC achieves ~ 50x deeper contrast than that achieved with PWP in a temporally evolving speckle field. Our results make the SCSCC a valuable wavefront sensor concept for the upcoming Habitable World Observatory mission.
title Single-shot focal plane wavefront sensing with the spatially-clipped self-coherent camera
topic Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.03870