Simulations of coronagraphy with a dynamic hologram for the direct detection of exo-planets

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates through simulations that incorporating an adaptive hologram in coronagraphs significantly enhances the detection capabilities for exoplanets by reducing residual starlight, with potential for practical implementation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel adaptive hologram approach to improve coronagraph performance and provides specific transmission accuracy requirements for effective deployment.

Findings

Detection limit improved by factors of 1000 to 10000 with hologram use

Transmission accuracy requirements are derived for hologram pixels

Preliminary tests feasible with existing technologies

Abstract

In a previous paper, we discussed an original solution to improve the performances of coronagraphs by adding, in the optical scheme, an adaptive hologram removing most of the residual speckle starlight. In our simulations, the detection limit in the flux ratio between a host star and a very near planet (5 lambda/D) improves over a factor 1000 (resp. 10000) when equipped with a hologram for cases of wavefront bumpiness imperfections of lambda/20 (resp. lambda/100). We derive, in this paper, the transmission accuracy required on the hologram pixels to achieve such goals. We show that preliminary tests could be performed on the basis of existing technologies.