Michigan Technological University

Department of Physics

is pleased to announce a Colloquium

with

 

(Report As Fulfillment Of the Requirement Of The Preliminary Exam)

 

Weidong Yang

(Graduate student, Physics Department, Michigan Technological Univ.)

 

Advisor: Christ Ftaclas, Alex Kostinski

 

 

 

 

Small Phase Error Problems In Extra-Solar Planet Imaging  And An Algorithm For Small Phase Retrieval Using Coronagraph

 

 

 

Abstract: Coronagraph technique has been regarded as one of the most promising technique in the direct detection of the extra-solar planets or faint light sources near a bright star. In coronagraph , the combination use of the mask and Lyot_stop can reduce the intensity of the bright star’s halo background to the order of magnitude of the targeted planet . However, we will see in this talk that even the small phase errors over the aperture can degrade the performance of coronagraph severely.  These small phase errors may come from the residual error after the Adaptive Optics phase correction and will take some light energy away from the on-axis beam and form the “sea” of speckles on the final imaged plane in a wide dynamic range. So retrieval and correction of the small phase errors becomes important in the coronagraph imaging.

 

Methods using Inverse Fourier Transform in the phase retrieval problem are common and fast like what Saxton and Gonsalvs did in their works, but these methods are not applicable to the retrieval of the extreme small phase error that matters to the coronagraph system with a Lyot-stop. In this talk , a possible non-Fourier Transform method  for the small  phase retrieval problem , that should be suitable for the small phase retrieval using coronagraph , will be discussed and some preliminary simulation results for the 1-D case will be presented.

 

3:00 p.m., Fisher Hall 135

Monday, April 22, 2002