Measurement, modeling, and adjustment of the 10.4-m-diameter Leighton telescopes

The design of the Leighton telescopes and the unique techniques used in their fabrication make these telescopes particularly amenable to precise modeling and measurement of their performance. The surface is essentially a continuous membrane supported at 99 uniformly distributed nodes by a pin joint triangular grid space frame. This structure can be accurately modeled and the surface can be adjusted using low- resolution maps. Holographic measurements of the surface figure of these telescopes at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO) and the Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO) have been made over several epochs with a repeatability of 5 - 10 micrometer over the zenith angle range from 15 to 75 degrees. The measurements are consistent with the calculated gravitational distortions. Several different surface setting strategies are evaluated and the 'second order deviation from homology,' Hd, is introduced as a measure of the gravitational degradation that can be expected for an optimally adjusted surface. Hd is defined as half of the RMS difference between the deviations from homology for the telescope pointed at the extremes of its intended sky coverage range. This parameter can be used to compare the expected performance of many different types of telescopes, including off-axis reflectors and slant-axis or polar mounts as well as standard alt-az designs. Subtle asymmetries in a telescope's structure are shown to dramatically affect its performance. The RMS surface error of the Leighton telescope is improved by more than a factor of two when optimized over the positive zenith angle quadrant compared to optimization over the negative quadrant. A global surface optimization algorithm is developed to take advantage of the long term stability and understanding of the Leighton telescopes. It significantly improves the operational performance of the telescope over that obtained using a simple 'rigging angle' adjustment. The surface errors for the CSO are now less than 22 micrometer RMS over most of the zenith angle range and the aperture efficiency at 810 GHz exceeds 33%. This illustrates the usefulness of the global surface optimization procedure

The Galactic Center Environment

The central half kiloparsec region of our Galaxy harbors a variety of phenomena unique to the central environment. This review discusses the observed structure and activity of the interstellar medium in this region in terms of its inevitable inflow toward the center of the Galactic gravitational potential well. A number of dissipative processes lead to a strong concentration of gas into a “Central Molecular Zone” of about 200-pc radius, in which the molecular medium is characterized by large densities, large velocity dispersions, high temperatures, and apparently strong magnetic fields. The physical state of the gas and the resultant star formation processes occurring in this environment are therefore quite unlike those occurring in the large-scale disk. Gas not consumed by star formation either enters a hot X ray–emitting halo and is lost as a thermally driven galactic wind or continues moving inward, probably discontinuously, through the domain of the few parsec-sized circumnuclear disks and eventually into the central parsec. There, the central radio source SgrA* currently accepts only a tiny fraction of the inflowing material, likely as a result of a limit cycle wherein the continual inflow of matter provokes star formation, which in turn can temporarily halt the inflow via mass-outflow winds

Imaging faint companions very close to stars

A vortex coronagraph on our extreme adaptive optics “well-corrected subaperture” on the Hale telescope has recently allowed the imaging of the triple-planet HR8799 system with a 1.5 m subaperture. Moreover, a faint, low-mass companion to a second star was imaged only one diffraction beam width away from the primary. These results illustrate the potential of the vortex coronagraph, which can enable exoplanet imaging and characterization with smaller telescopes than previously thought

Improved High Contrast Imaging with On-Axis Telescopes using a Multi-Stage Vortex Coronagraph

The vortex coronagraph is one of the most promising coronagraphs for high contrast imaging because of its simplicity, small inner working angle, high throughput, and clear off-axis discovery space. However, as with most coronagraphs, centrally-obscured on-axis telescopes degrade contrast. Based on the remarkable ability of vortex coronagraphs to move light between the interior and exterior of pupils, we propose a method, based on multiple vortices, that, without sacrificing throughput, reduces the residual light leakage to (a/A)^n, with n >=4, and a and A being the radii of the central obscuration and primary mirror, respectively. This method thus enables high contrasts to be reached even with an on-axis telescope.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figure

Direct detection and characterization of exoplanets using imaging Fourier transform spectroscopy

Space-based direct imaging provides prospects for detection and spectral characterization of exoplanets at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. Integral field spectrographs (IFS) have been historically baselined for these mission concepts. However, multiple studies have revealed that detector noise is a serious obstacle for such instruments when observing extremely faint targets such as Earth-like planets. Imaging Fourier transform spectrographs (iFTS) are generally less sensitive to detector noise, and have several other compelling features such as simultaneous imaging and spectroscopy, smaller-format detector requirements, and variable spectral resolution. To date, they have not been studied as options for such missions. In this work, we compare the capabilities of integral field spectrographs and imaging Fourier transform spectrographs to directly obtain spectra from an Earth-like planet using analytic and numerical models. Specifically, we compare the required exposure time to achieve the same signal-to-noise ratio of the two architectures over a range of detector and optical system parameters. We find that for a 6-meter telescope, an IFS outperforms an iFTS at optical wavelengths. In the near-IR, the relative efficiency of an IFS and iFTS depends on the instrument design and detector noise. An iFTS will be more efficient than an IFS if the readout noise of near-IR detector is above 2-3 e-/pix/frame (t_frame=1000s), which correspond to half to one-third of detector noise of the state-of-art. However, if the readout noise is further reduced to below this threshold, the performance of an IFS will experience a substantial improvement and become more efficient. These results motivate consideration of an iFTS as an alternative option for future direct imaging space missions in the near-IR.Comment: 26 pages, 13 pages, submitted to PAS

Measurement, modeling, and adjustment of the 10.4-m-diameter Leighton telescopes

The design of the Leighton telescopes and the unique techniques used in their fabrication make these telescopes particularly amenable to precise modeling and measurement of their performance. The surface is essentially a continuous membrane supported at 99 uniformly distributed nodes by a pin joint triangular grid space frame. This structure can be accurately modeled and the surface can be adjusted using low- resolution maps. Holographic measurements of the surface figure of these telescopes at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO) and the Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO) have been made over several epochs with a repeatability of 5 - 10 micrometer over the zenith angle range from 15 to 75 degrees. The measurements are consistent with the calculated gravitational distortions. Several different surface setting strategies are evaluated and the 'second order deviation from homology,' Hd, is introduced as a measure of the gravitational degradation that can be expected for an optimally adjusted surface. Hd is defined as half of the RMS difference between the deviations from homology for the telescope pointed at the extremes of its intended sky coverage range. This parameter can be used to compare the expected performance of many different types of telescopes, including off-axis reflectors and slant-axis or polar mounts as well as standard alt-az designs. Subtle asymmetries in a telescope's structure are shown to dramatically affect its performance. The RMS surface error of the Leighton telescope is improved by more than a factor of two when optimized over the positive zenith angle quadrant compared to optimization over the negative quadrant. A global surface optimization algorithm is developed to take advantage of the long term stability and understanding of the Leighton telescopes. It significantly improves the operational performance of the telescope over that obtained using a simple 'rigging angle' adjustment. The surface errors for the CSO are now less than 22 micrometer RMS over most of the zenith angle range and the aperture efficiency at 810 GHz exceeds 33%. This illustrates the usefulness of the global surface optimization procedure

Detecting exoplanets with high contrast coronagraphy

The first images of exoplanets are now in hand, but the imaging of even fainter planets near bright stars requires the development of very high contrast detection techniques. The two necessary aspects are precise wavefront control and efficient starlight rejection. These essential aspects were recently demonstrated at the Palomar Observatory on a 1.5 m diameter "well-corrected subaperture" on the Hale telescope. "Extreme" adaptive optics wavefront correction was achieved using fine-scale wavefront correction on the subaperture, combined with phase-retrieval to reduce non-common path errors such as faint speckles. Starlight rejection has been maximized with a novel vector vortex coronagraph, precise tip-tilt and focus control within the coronagraph, and the ``locally optimized combination of images" speckle calibration algorithm. The Palomar system provides small-angle contrast sensitivities comparable to those of much larger telescopes, allowing the imaging of e.g., the three HR8799 planets and the HD32297 disk. These results provide a first validation of the steps needed to achieve high-contrast in on-sky observations, and illustrate the promise of future ground- and space-based high-contrast instruments

Ring-apodized vortex coronagraphs for obscured telescopes. I. Transmissive ring apodizers

The vortex coronagraph (VC) is a new generation small inner working angle (IWA) coronagraph currently offered on various 8-meter class ground-based telescopes. On these observing platforms, the current level of performance is not limited by the intrinsic properties of actual vortex devices, but by wavefront control residuals and incoherent background (e.g. thermal emission of the sky) or the light diffracted by the imprint of the secondary mirror and support structures on the telescope pupil. In the particular case of unfriendly apertures (mainly large central obscuration) when very high contrast is needed (e.g. direct imaging of older exoplanets with extremely large telescopes or space- based coronagraphs), a simple VC, as most coronagraphs, can not deliver its nominal performance because of the contamination due to the diffraction from the obscured part of the pupil. Here we propose a novel yet simple concept that circumvents this problem. We combine a vortex phase mask in the image plane of a high-contrast instrument with a single pupil-based amplitude ring apodizer, tailor designed to exploit the unique convolution properties of the VC at the Lyot-stop plane. We show that such a ring-apodized vortex coronagraph (RAVC) restores the perfect attenuation property of the VC regardless of the size of the central obscuration, and for any (even) topological charge of the vortex. More importantly the RAVC maintains the IWA and conserves a fairly high throughput, which are signature properties of the VC.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

An Extended Star Formation History for the Galactic Center from Hubble Space Telescope/NICMOS Observations

We present Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Near-Infrared Camera and Multiobject Spectrometer (NICMOS) observations as evidence that continuous star formation has created much of the central stellar cusp of the Galaxy. The data are the deepest ever obtained for a Galactic Center (GC) population, being $>$50% complete for \mnk$<19.3$, or initial stellar masses $\gtrsim$2 \Msun. We use Geneva and Padova stellar evolution models to produce synthetic luminosity functions for burst and continuous star formation scenarios, finding that the observations are fit best by continuous star formation at a rate that is consistent with the recent star formation activity that produced the three massive young clusters in the central 50 \pc. Further, it is not possible to fit the observations with ancient burst models, such as would be appropriate for an old population like that in Baade's Window or NGC6528