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Coronagraph Science Studies by the WFIRST Preparatory Science Teams
No abstract available
Sensitivity of WFIRST Coronagraph Broadband Contrast Performance to DM Actuator Errors
The WFIRST/AFTA 2.4 m space telescope currently under study includes a stellar coronagraph for the imaging and the spectral characterization of extrasolar planets. The coronagraph employs sequential deformable mirrors to compensate for phase and amplitude errors. Using the optical model of an Occulting Mask Coronagraph (OMC) testbed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), we have investigated the sensitivity of a Hybrid Lyot Coronagraph (HLC) broadband contrast performance to DM actuator errors and actuator limits. Considered case include drifts in actuator gains or actuator response curves, paired actuators, as well as the limits imposed by a neighboring-actuator rule. Actual data about the actuator drifts and the knowledge about the paired-actuators obtained in several DM characterization experiments conducted at JPL, as well as the neighboring-actuator rule implemented on the OMC testbed were used in simulations. We obtained good agreement between the model prediction and the testbed measurement in terms of static HLC contrast floor and contrast chromaticity.
Optimizing the Regularization in Broadband Wavefront Control Algorithm for WFIRST Coronagraph
The WFIRST/AFTA 2.4 m space telescope currently under study includes a stellar coronagraph for the imaging and the spectral characterization of extrasolar planets. The coronagraph employs sequential deformable mirrors to compensate for phase and amplitude errors. Using the optical model of an Occulting Mask Coronagraph (OMC) testbed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), we have investigated and compared through modeling and simulations the performance of several actuator regularization-schemes in broadband wavefront control algorithm used to generate dark holes in an OMC, such as a Hybrid Lyot Coronagraph (HLC). Using the concept of a Tikhonov filter constituting the G-matrix, we have explained what the different regularization schemes do to singular-modes during a wavefront control process called Electric Field Conjugation (EFC). In some cases we confirmed the numerical predictions with the testbed measured results. We present our findings in this paper.
The Effect of Radiation-Induced Traps on the WFIRST Coronagraph Detectors
No abstract available
WFIRST Coronagraph Starlight Suppression Technology Progress
No abstract available
Cosmic Shear Weak Lensing with the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST)
No abstract available
Phase Retrieval Implementation for the WFIRST Coronagraph Development Testbed
No abstract available
Milestone 7: EMCCD status - WFIRST Coronagraph Stanford Meeting No. 9
No abstract available
OGLE-2015-BLG-1670Lb: A Cold Neptune beyond the Snow Line in the Provisional WFIRST Microlensing Survey Field
We present the analysis of the microlensing event OGLE-2015-BLG-1670, detected in a high-extinction field very close to the Galactic plane. Due to the dust extinction along the line of sight, this event was too faint to be detected before it reached the peak of magnification. The microlensing light-curve models indicate a high-magnification event with a maximum of A(max)≳ 200, very sensitive to planetary deviations. An anomaly in the light curve has been densely observed by the microlensing surveys MOA, KMTNet, and OGLE. From the light-curve modeling, we find a planetary anomaly characterized by a planet-to-host mass ratio, q=(1.00 (sup+0.18, sub -0.16) x 10(exp -4), at the peak recently identified in the mass-ratio function of microlensing planets. Thus, this event is interesting to include in future statistical studies about planet demography. We have explored the possible degeneracies and find two competing planetary models resulting from the s ↔ 1/s degeneracy. However, because the projected separation is very close to s = 1, the physical implications for the planet for the two solutions are quite similar, except for the value of s. By combining the light-curve parameters with a Galactic model, we have estimated the planet mass M(2)=17.9(sup +9.6,sub-8.8)M(ꚛ) and the lens distance D(L) = 6.7(sup +1.0, sub -1.3) kpc, corresponding to a Neptune-mass planet close to the Galactic bulge. Such events with a low absolute latitude (|b| ≈1ᵒ.1) are subject to both high extinction and more uncertain source distances, two factors that may affect the mass measurements in the provisional Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope fields. More events are needed to investigate the potential trade-off between the higher lensing rate and the difficulty in measuring masses in these low-latitude fields.