Characterizing Rocky and Gaseous Exoplanets with 2-meter Class Space-based Coronagraphs

TL;DR

This paper models the noise and spectral characterization potential of 2-meter class space-based coronagraphs for studying various exoplanets, analyzing detection challenges and instrumental constraints.

Contribution

It develops a detailed noise model for small space telescopes and assesses their capability to characterize different exoplanet types with realistic instrument parameters.

Findings

Detection of water vapor in Earth-like planets is very challenging due to detector efficiency.

Dark current noise dominates most observations, highlighting the importance of CCD improvements.

Coronagraph inner and outer working angles significantly influence the types of planets that can be studied.

Abstract

Several concepts now exist for small, space-based missions to directly characterize exoplanets in reflected light. Here, we develop an instrument noise model suitable for studying the spectral characterization potential of a coronagraph-equipped, space-based telescope. We adopt a baseline set of telescope and instrument parameters appropriate for near-future planned missions like WFIRST-AFTA, including a 2 m diameter primary aperture, an operational wavelength range of 0.4-1.0 um, and an instrument spectral resolution of 70, and apply our baseline model to a variety of spectral models of different planet types, including Earth twins, Jupiter twins, and warm and cool Jupiters and Neptunes. With our exoplanet spectral models, we explore wavelength-dependent planet-star flux ratios for main sequence stars of various effective temperatures, and discuss how coronagraph inner and outer working angle constraints will influence the potential to study different types of planets. For planets most favorable to spectroscopic characterization, we study the integration times required to achieve moderate signal-to-noise ratio spectra. We also explore the sensitivity of the integration times required to either detect the bottom or presence of key absorption bands to coronagraph raw contrast performance, exozodiacal light levels, and the distance to the planetary system. Decreasing detector quantum efficiency at longer visible wavelengths makes the detection of water vapor in the atmospheres of Earth-like planets extremely challenging, and also hinders detections of the 0.89 um methane band. Additionally, most modeled observations have noise dominated by dark current, indicating that improving CCD performance could substantially drive down requisite integration times. Finally, we briefly discuss the extension of our models to a more distant future Large UV-Optical-InfraRed (LUVOIR) mission.