The Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics System: Enabling High-Contrast Imaging on Solar-System Scales

By N. Jovanovic, F. Martinache, Olivier Guyon, C. Clergeon, Gurmeet Singh, T. Kudo, V. Garrel, K. Newman, D. Doughty, J. Lozi and 28 more. 2015

355 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics (SCExAO) instrument is a multipurpose high-contrast imaging platform designed for the discovery and detailed characterization of exoplanetary systems and serves as a testbed for high-contrast imaging technologies for ELTs. It is a multiband instrument which makes use of light from 600 to 2500 nm, allowing for coronagraphic direct exoplanet imaging of the inner 3λ/D from the stellar host. Wavefront sensing and control are key to the operation of SCExAO. A partial correction of low-order modes is provided by Subaru’s facility adaptive optics system with the final correction, including high-order modes, implemented downstream by a combination of a visible pyramid wavefront sensor and a 2000-element deformable mirror. The well-corrected NIR (y-K bands) wavefronts can then be injected into any of the available coronagraphs, including but not limited to the phase-induced amplitude apodization and the vector vortex coronagraphs, both of which offer an inner working angle as low as 1λ/D. Noncommon path, low-order aberrations are sensed with a coronagraphic low-order wavefront sensor in the infrared (IR). Low noise, high frame rate NIR detectors allow for active speckle nulling and coherent differential imaging, while the HAWAII 2RG detector in the HiCIAO imager and/or the CHARIS integral field spectrograph (from mid-2016) can take deeper exposures and/or perform angular, spectral, and polarimetric differential imaging. Science in the visible is provided by two interferometric modules: VAMPIRES and FIRST, which enable subdiffraction limited imaging in the visible region with polarimetric and spectroscopic capabilities respectively. We describe the instrument in detail and present preliminary results both on-sky and in the laboratory.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ffb2ef2fe5975bfd85d5ddcc92293f0c47166952

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. N. Madhusudhan
2. B. Bowler
3. R. MacDonald
4. D. Deming
5. M. Line
6. Jon Fortney
7. H. Knutson
8. A. Showman

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. B. Bowler
2. N. Madhusudhan

In Instrumentation

1. B. Bowler
2. N. Madhusudhan
3. D. Deming
4. R. MacDonald
5. M. Line
6. H. Knutson
7. Jon Fortney
8. A. Showman

Citations in the corpus

• Exoplanetary Atmospheres: Key Insights, Challenges, and Prospects (2019, background): “, Keck (129), GPI on Gemini (93), SCExAO on Subaru (117), SPHERE on VLT (29).”
• Imaging Extrasolar Giant Planets (2016, background): “A detailed description of all facets of this instrument is described in Jovanovic et al. (2015).”