Self-coherent camera: first results of a high-contrast imaging bench in visible light
2010
Extreme adaptive optics and coronagraphy are mandatory for direct imaging of exoplanets. Quasi-static aberrations
limit the instrument performance producing speckle noise in the focal plane. We propose a Self-Coherent
Camera (SCC) to both control a deformable mirror that actively compensates wavefront error, and calibrate the
speckle noise. We create a reference beam to spatially modulate the coronagraphic speckle pattern with Fizeau
fringes. In a first step, we are able to extract wavefront aberrations from the science image and correct for them
using a deformable mirror. In a second step, we apply a post-processing algorithm to discriminate the companion
image from the residual speckle field.
To validate the instrumental concept, we developed a high contrast imaging bench in visible light. We associated
a SCC to a four quadrant phase mask coronagraph and a deformable mirror (DM) with a high number
of actuators (32x32 Boston Michromachines MEMS). We will present this bench and show first experimental
results of focal plane wavefront sensing and high contrast imaging. The measurements are compared to numerical
simulations.
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