High contrast imaging of exoplanets on ELTs using a super-Nyquist wavefront control scheme

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the feasibility of super-Nyquist wavefront control (SNWFC) for ELTs, enabling high contrast imaging of exoplanets outside the traditional AO control region through laboratory experiments and simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a super-Nyquist wavefront control scheme using a sine wave phase plate and demonstrates its effectiveness through laboratory tests and simulations.

Findings

SNWFC is feasible with a simple speckle nulling technique.

Simulation shows SNWFC can enhance high contrast imaging.

Potential for improved exoplanet characterization outside the central dark hole.

Abstract

One of the key science goals for extremely large telescopes (ELTs) is the detailed characterization of already known directly imaged exoplanets. The typical adaptive optics (AO) Nyquist control region for ELTs is ~0.4 arcseconds, placing many already known directly imaged planets outside the DM control region and not allowing any standard wavefront control scheme to remove speckles that would allow higher SNR images/spectra to be acquired. This can be fixed with super-Nyquist wavefront control (SNWFC), using a sine wave phase plate to allow for wavefront control outside the central DM Nyquist region. We demonstrate that SNWFC is feasible through a simple, deterministic, non-coronagraphic, super-Nyquist speckle nulling technique in the adaptive optics laboratory at the National Research Council of Canada. We also present results in simulation of how SNWFC using the self coherent camera (SCC) can be used for high contrast imaging. This technique could be implemented on future high contrast imaging instruments to improve contrast outside the standard central dark hole for higher SNR characterization of exoplanets.