THE VECTOR VORTEX CORONAGRAPH: LABORATORY RESULTS AND FIRST LIGHT AT PALOMAR OBSERVATORY

By D. Mawet, E. Serabyn, K. Liewer, R. Burruss, J. Hickey, David M. Shemo. 2009

175 citations recorded by the source corpus.

High-contrast coronagraphy will be needed to image and characterize faint extrasolar planetary systems. Coronagraphy is a rapidly evolving field, and many enhanced alternatives to the classical Lyot coronagraph have been proposed in the past 10 years. Here, we discuss the operation of the vector vortex coronagraph, which is one of the most efficient possible coronagraphs. We first present recent laboratory results and then first light observations at the Palomar observatory. Our near-infrared H-band (centered at ∼1.65 μm) and K-band (centered at ∼2.2 μm) vector vortex devices demonstrated excellent contrast results in the lab, down to ∼10−6 at an angular separation of ∼3λ/d. On sky, we detected a brown dwarf companion 3000 times fainter than its host star (HR 7672) in the Ks band (centered at ∼2.15 μm), at an angular separation of ∼2.5λ/d. Current and next-generation high-contrast instruments can directly benefit from the demonstrated capabilities of such a vector vortex: simplicity, small inner working angle, high optical throughput (>90%), and maximal off-axis discovery space.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f8a6b8ebb1f31691da89e2762ceb9eb7c853e04f

How researchers see this paper

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. B. Bowler
2. Anthony Boccaletti
3. J. Beuzit
4. R. Gratton
5. Julien H. Girard
6. H. Schmid
7. Maud Langlois
8. David Mouillet

In Instrumentation

1. B. Bowler
2. Anthony Boccaletti
3. J. Beuzit
4. R. Gratton
5. Maud Langlois
6. David Mouillet
7. A. Vigan
8. F. D’Antona

Citations in the corpus

• Imaging Extrasolar Giant Planets (2016, methodology): “…interferometric science in the visible with VAMPIRES (Norris et al. 2015) and FIRST (Huby et al. 2012), high-contrast integral field spectroscopy (Brandt et al. 2014b), and coronagraphy with phase-induced amplitude apodization (Guyon 2003) and vector vortex coronagraphs (Mawet et al. 2010).”
• SPHERE: the exoplanet imager for the Very Large Telescope (2019, background): “Since the original design of Bernard Lyot back in 1930’s many ideas have been proposed and several were effectively implemented on the sky (Mouillet et al. 1997; Boccaletti et al. 2004; Mawet et al. 2010).”