HCST
Managing institution
Caltech
Person to contact
People willing to give talks
Dimitri Mawet
Nemanja Jovanovic
Garreth Ruane
Daniel Echeverri
Jorge Llop
Main scientific focus
High Contrast Spectroscopy for Segmented Telescopes, Apodized Vortex Coronagraph for HabEx, LUVOIR, Keck and TMT.
Environment of the testbed
In air, active vibration isolation, passive thermal isolation (double enclosure).
Key hardware items
Dual source (start+planet).
2 NKT supercontinuum white light lasers.
<10 nm rms Au-coated OAPs from Nu Tek (IR compatible).
1 BMC kilo-DM (slot for 2nd kDM).
Apodized Vortex Coronagraph (compatible with any 3-plane coronagraphs).
Reflective apodizer.
Reflective Lyot stop for Lyot-based Low-Order Wavefront Sensing.
Andor Neo sCMOS camera.
Fiber Injection Unit for High Dispersion Coronagraphy.
Current status
Operational, first light Spring 2018, first dark hole June 2018.
Software language
Linux, Matlab.
Is this software shared?
To be released on Github in the near future.
Reference papers
New method to achieve the proper polarization state for a vector vortex coronagraph, Llop-Sayson et al. 2021
Wavefront control experiments with a single mode fiber at the High-Contrast Spectroscopy Testbed for Segmented Telescopes (HCST), Llop-Sayson et al. 2020
The high-contrast spectroscopy testbed for segmented telescopes (HCST): new wavefront control demonstrations, Llop-Sayson et al. 2019
High-contrast spectroscopy testbed for Segmented Telescopes: instrument overview and development progress, Jovanovic et al. 2018