1. High-contrast imager for complex aperture telescopes (HiCAT): 7. Dark zone demonstration with fully segmented aperture coronagraph
- Author
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Scott D. Will, James Noss, Kelsey Glazer, Jaret Prothro, Iva Laginja, Gregory R. Brady, Hari B. Subedi, Peter Petrone, Raphaël Pourcelot, Evelyn McChesney, Laurent Mugnier, Sam Weinstock, Marshall D. Perrin, Heather Olszewski, Ron Shiri, Susan M. Redmond, John G. Hagopian, Matthew Maclay, Bryony Nickson, Leonid Pogorelyuk, Lucie Leboulleux, Meiji Nguyen, Yinzi Xin, Emiel H. Por, Rémi Soummer, Ananya Sahoo, Mamadou N'Diaye, Anand Sivaramakrishnan, Julia Fowler, Nathan Scott, Maggie Kautz, Rebecca Zhang, Laurent Pueyo, Théo Jolivet, Rob Gontrum, Keira Brooks, Jean-François Sauvage, and Thomas Comeau
- Subjects
Physics ,Wavefront ,business.industry ,Aperture ,Astrophysics::Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics ,Wavefront sensor ,Deformable mirror ,law.invention ,Telescope ,Tilt (optics) ,Optics ,law ,Piston (optics) ,Astrophysics::Earth and Planetary Astrophysics ,business ,Coronagraph - Abstract
We present recent laboratory results demonstrating high-contrast coronagraphy for future space-based large segmented telescopes such as the Large UV, Optical, IR telescope (LUVOIR) mission concept studied by NASA. The High-contrast Imager for Complex Aperture Telescopes (HiCAT) testbed aims to implement a system-level hardware demonstration for segmented aperture coronagraphs with wavefront control. The telescope hardware simulator employs a segmented deformable mirror with 36 hexagonal segments that can be controlled in piston, tip, and tilt. In addition, two continuous deformable mirrors are used for high-order wavefront sensing and control. The low-order sensing subsystem includes a dedicated tip-tilt stage, a coronagraphic target acquisition camera, and a Zernike wavefront sensor that is used to measure low-order aberration drifts. We explore the performance of a segmented aperture coronagraph both in “static” operations (limited by natural drifts and instabilities) and in “dynamic” operations (in the presence of artificial wavefront drifts added to the deformable mirrors), and discuss the estimation and control strategies used to reach and maintain the dark zone contrast. We summarize experimental results that quantify the performance of the testbed in terms of contrast, inner/outer working angle and bandpass, and analyze limiting factors by comparing against our end-to-end models.
- Published
- 2021