The Fast Atmospheric Self-Coherent Camera Technique: Laboratory Results and Future Directions

TL;DR

This paper introduces the Fast Atmospheric Self-Coherent Camera Technique (FAST), a promising method for improving exoplanet detection from ground-based telescopes by mitigating wavefront errors, with simulation and laboratory results demonstrating its potential.

Contribution

The paper develops and tests the FAST framework, combining numerical simulations and laboratory experiments to enhance exoplanet imaging capabilities of ground-based telescopes.

Findings

FAST can potentially enable direct detection of exoplanets with current 10-m telescopes.

Simulations show FAST's promise for detecting habitable exoplanets with future ELTs.

Laboratory characterization of coronagraphic masks supports FAST's practical implementation.

Abstract

Direct detection and detailed characterization of exoplanets using extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) is a key science goal of future extremely large telescopes (ELTs). However, wavefront errors will limit the sensitivity of this endeavor. Limitations for ground-based telescopes arise from both quasi-static and residual AO-corrected atmospheric wavefront errors, the latter of which generates short-lived aberrations that will average into a halo over a long exposure. We have developed and tested the framework for a solution to both of these problems using the self-coherent camera (SCC), to be applied to ground-based telescopes, called the Fast Atmospheric SCC Technique (FAST). In this paper we present updates of new and ongoing work for FAST, both in numerical simulation and in the laboratory. We first present numerical simulations that illustrate the scientific potential of FAST, including, with current 10-m telescopes, the direct detection of exoplanets reflected light and exo-Jupiters in thermal emission and, with future ELTs, the detection of habitable exoplanets. In the laboratory, we present the first characterizations of our proposed, and now fabricated, coronagraphic masks.