Updated simulation tools for Roman coronagraph PSFs

TL;DR

This paper presents updated simulation tools for the Roman Space Telescope's coronagraph PSFs, including testing results, comparisons with existing tools, and future integration into WebbPSF.

Contribution

It introduces and validates new POPPY-based models for Roman coronagraph PSFs, enhancing simulation accuracy and efficiency, and plans for integration with WebbPSF.

Findings

POPPY models show good agreement with PROPER/FALCO.

Simulation times are optimized for high-contrast PSFs.

Future plans include integrating models into WebbPSF.

Abstract

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Coronagraph Instrument will be the first large scale coronagraphmission with active wavefront control to be operated in space and will demonstrate technologies essential tofuture missions to image Earth-like planets. Consisting of multiple coronagraph modes, the coronagraph isexpected to characterize and image exoplanets at 1E-8 or better contrast levels. An object-oriented physicaloptics modeling tool called POPPY provides flexible and efficient simulations of high-contrast point spreadfunctions (PSFs). As such, three coronagraph modes have been modeled in POPPY. In this paper, we presentthe recent testing results of the models and provide quantitative comparisons between results from POPPY andexisting tools such as PROPER/FALCO. These comparisons include the computation times required for PSFcalculations. In addition, we discuss the future implementation of the POPPY models for the POPPY front-endpackage WebbPSF, a widely used simulation tool for JWST PSFs.