End-to-end simulation of AO-assisted coronagraphic differential imaging: estimation of performance for SPHERE
Abstract
SPHERE (Spectro Polarimetric High contrast Exoplanet REsearch), the planet finder instrument for the VLT is designed to study relatively bright extrasolar giant planets around young or nearby stars. SPHERE is a set of three instruments fed by the same AO-system, two of them share the same coronagraph. This complex system has been modeled with Fourier Optics to investigate the performance of the whole instrument. In turns, this end-to-end model was useful to analyze the sensitivity to various parameters (WFE, alignment of the coronagraph, differential aberrations) and to put some specifications on the sub-systems. This paper presents some example of sensitivity analysis and some contrast performance of the instruments as a function of the flux for the main observing mode of SPHERE: the Dual Band Imaging (DBI), equivalent to the Spectral Differential Imaging technique.
- Publication:
-
Adaptive Optics Systems
- Pub Date:
- July 2008
- DOI:
- 10.1117/12.789349
- arXiv:
- arXiv:0807.0697
- Bibcode:
- 2008SPIE.7015E..6EB
- Keywords:
-
- Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 11 pages, will be published in the proceeding of the SPIE conference Volume 7015 "Adaptive Optics", held in Marseille from 23 to 28 june 2008