The detection and characterisation of extra-solar planets is a major theme
driving modern astronomy, with the vast majority of such measurements being
achieved by Doppler radial-velocity and transit observations. Another technique
-- direct imaging -- can access a parameter space that complements these
methods, and paves the way for future technologies capable of detailed
characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres and surfaces. However achieving
the required levels of performance with direct imaging, particularly from
ground-based telescopes which must contend with the Earth's turbulent
atmosphere, requires considerable sophistication in the instrument and
detection strategy. Here we demonstrate a new generation of photonic
pupil-remapping devices which build upon the interferometric framework
developed for the {\it Dragonfly} instrument: a high contrast waveguide-based
device which recovers robust complex visibility observables. New generation
Dragonfly devices overcome problems caused by interference from unguided light
and low throughput, promising unprecedented on-sky performance. Closure phase
measurement scatter of only ∼0.2∘ has been achieved, with waveguide
throughputs of >70%. This translates to a maximum contrast-ratio
sensitivity (between the host star and its orbiting planet) at 1λ/D
(1σ detection) of 5.3×10−4 (when a conventional
adaptive-optics (AO) system is used) or 1.8×10−4 (for typical
`extreme-AO' performance), improving even further when random error is
minimised by averaging over multiple exposures. This is an order of magnitude
beyond conventional pupil-segmenting interferometry techniques (such as
aperture masking), allowing a previously inaccessible part of the star to
planet contrast-separation parameter space to be explored