TDEM final report: Enhanced direct imaging exoplanet detection with astrometry mass determination

TL;DR

This project demonstrated that combining astrometry and high-contrast imaging with a single instrument can accurately detect and measure Earth-like exoplanets, surpassing key performance milestones and validating the approach's feasibility.

Contribution

The paper presents the first medium fidelity demonstration of simultaneous astrometry and high-contrast imaging using the same optics, enabling more efficient exoplanet detection and characterization.

Findings

Astrometry accuracy achieved was 4 times better than the milestone requirement.

High-contrast imaging reached an average raw contrast of 3.33e-7, surpassing the milestone.

Contrast stability improved to 2.72e-8 through frame averaging and subtraction.

Abstract

This Final Report (FR) presents the results of the Enhanced direct imaging exoplanet detection with astrometry mass determination project, which was executed in support of NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program and the ROSES Technology Development for Exoplanet Missions (TDEM). The first milestone is concerned with a demonstration of medium fidelity astrometry accuracy and the second milestone demonstrates high-contrast imaging utilizing the same astrometry-capable optics. We have met milestone #1 with a comfortable margin. The average accuracy obtained over the three datasets is 5.75e-5 L/D, which is 4 times better than the milestone requirement, or equivalent to 2.5microarcsec on 2.4m telescope, or 1.5microarcsec for a 4m telescope, working in the visible band. These results show the potential of this technique to enable detection and measure masses of Earth-like planets around nearby stars, hence bringing a real benefit to the astronomy community. We also met milestone #2 and demonstrated that it is possible to achieve high-contrast imaging utilizing a coronagraph fed by a telescope equipped with a DP, enabling dual use of the telescope. We performed three different high-contrast imaging runs and met the milestone #2 of 5e-7 raw contrast for all of them. On average, we obtained 3.33e-7 raw contrast considering all data sets. This result is 35% better than the milestone #2 requirement. We validated the stability of the high-contrast region by averaging frames and subtracting the average from single frames, which resulted in contrast improvement of approximately one order of magnitude, reaching 2.72e-8 contrast. The main achievement of this work was the medium fidelity demonstration and feasibility validation of performing astrometry and direct imaging using the same instrument, significantly enhancing the expected scientific yield of dedicated exoplanet characterization missions.