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Published June 27, 2019 | Submitted
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Key Technologies for the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope Coronagraph Instrument

Abstract

The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) Coronagraph Instrument (CGI) is a high-contrast imager and integral field spectrograph that will enable the study of exoplanets and circumstellar disks at visible wavelengths. Ground-based high-contrast instrumentation has fundamentally limited performance at small working angles, even under optimistic assumptions for 30m-class telescopes. There is a strong scientific driver for better performance, particularly at visible wavelengths. Future flagship mission concepts aim to image Earth analogues with visible light flux ratios of more than 10^10. CGI is a critical intermediate step toward that goal, with a predicted 10^8-9 flux ratio capability in the visible. CGI achieves this through improvements over current ground and space systems in several areas: (i) Hardware: space-qualified (TRL9) deformable mirrors, detectors, and coronagraphs, (ii) Algorithms: wavefront sensing and control; post-processing of integral field spectrograph, polarimetric, and extended object data, and (iii) Validation of telescope and instrument models at high accuracy and precision. This white paper, submitted to the 2018 NAS Exoplanet Science Strategy call, describes the status of key CGI technologies and presents ways in which performance is likely to evolve as the CGI design matures.

Additional Information

© 2018 California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged. The work was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The decision to implement the WFIRST mission will not be finalized until NASA's completion of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process. This document is being made available for information purposes only. This whitepaper was submitted to the Exoplanet Science Strategy call in March 2018 and is presented here without modification. An updated version of Fig. 2 and associated detailed description can be found in ref (21).

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August 19, 2023
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