Design and experimental test of an optical vortex coronagraph [IMA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04228


The optical vortex coronagraph (OVC) is one of the promising ways for direct imaging exoplanets because of its small inner working angle and high throughput. This paper presents the design and laboratory demonstration performance at 633nm and 1520nm of the OVC based on liquid crystal polymers (LCP). Two LCPs has been manufactured in partnership with a commercial vendor. The OVC can deliver a good performance in laboratory test and achieve the contrast of the order 10^-6 at angular distance 3{\lambda}/D, which is able to image the giant exoplanets at a young stage in combination with extreme adaptive optics.

Read this paper on arXiv…

C. Liu, D. Ren, Y. Zhu, et. al.
Tue, 14 Mar 17
45/74

Comments: 8 pages and 6 figures