Experimental Validation for Serial Conjunction of Diffraction-limited Coronagraph and Fiber Nuller

TL;DR

This paper experimentally validates a combined nuller system using a diffraction-limited coronagraph and fiber nuller, demonstrating improved contrast mitigation across a broad spectral bandwidth for exoplanet imaging.

Contribution

It introduces and experimentally tests a serially conjoined nuller system combining a 1D diffraction-limited coronagraph with a fiber nuller, showing enhanced contrast performance.

Findings

Achieved contrast mitigation of 3.5×10⁻⁵ at 6% below design wavelength.

System maintains robustness against broad spectral bandwidth.

Performance approaches previous contrast mitigation levels at design wavelength.

Abstract

We report the experimental results of a serially conjoined nuller system, which combines a type of Lyot coronagraph with a fiber nuller. The utilized one-dimensional diffraction-limited coronagraph (1DDLC) has promising features (binary nuller, small inner working angles (IWAs)). Still, it has a performance that is highly sensitive to spectral bandwidth and tilt aberrations. Nevertheless, for the 1DDLC, wavelengths other than the design wavelength introduce leaks with a flat wavefront on the Lyot-stop plane, preserving the same complex amplitude profile as an on-axis point source. This property supports the concept of serially coupling additional nullers after the 1DDLC. The fiber-nulling unit employs a Lyot-plane mask, relay optics (1/100$\times$), and a single-mode fiber. The Lyot-plane mask splits the incoming beam -- comprising leakage from the 1DDLC and planetary light -- into four beams so that, in principle, the on-axis single-mode fiber does not couple with the on-axis leak from the 1DDLC. For the wavelength 6-\% less than the coronagraph's design-center wavelength, we confirmed the contrast mitigation ability of $3.5 \times 10^{-5}$, which is about 1/20 times the value of the case with only 1DDLC. The resultant value approximately reaches the 1DDLC's contrast mitigation ability at the design center wavelength demonstrated in the previous study, suggesting that the combined system works robustly against the broad spectral bandwidth. Future work needs to address the demonstration of the anticipated robustness for the contrast-mitigation level lower than about $10^{-5}$.