WFIRST Coronagraph Flight Performance Modeling

Abstract

As it has for the past few years, numerical modeling is being used to predict the on-orbit, high-contrast imaging performance of the WFIRST coronagraph, which was recently defined to be solely a technology demonstrator. A consequence has been a realignment of modeling priorities and revised applications of modeling uncertainty factors and margins, which apply to multiple factors such as pointing and wavefront jitter, thermally-induced deformations, polarization, and aberration sensitivities. At the same time, the models have increased in fidelity as additional parameters have been added, such as time-dependent pupil shear and mid-spatial-frequency deformations of the primary and secondary mirrors, detector effects, and reaction-wheel-speed-dependent pointing and wavefront jitter.