Spectroscopy of exoplanets can potentially detect biomarkers in habitable planets around other stars. The high dispersion coronagraphy (HDC) technique provides a pathway to search for biomarkers in planets around M dwarfs with next-generation ground-based extremely large telescopes (ELTs). The HDC consists of a coronagraph operating behind an extreme adaptive optics (AO) system, a single-mode fiber injection unit, and a high resolution spectrometer (HRS). The coronagraph spatially filters out starlight while the HRS spectrally discriminates starlight from planet light, reaching a starlight suppression level that enables biomarker detection. I will simulating ELT HDC instrument performance as a function of wavelength, spectral resolution, starlight suppression, and planet types, considering realistic noise budget that includes speckle noise, thermal and sky background and exozodical background.

Date Published: 10 July 2018
PDF
Proc. SPIE 10703, Adaptive Optics Systems VI, 107031R (10 July 2018); doi: 10.1117/12.2312387

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10703:
Adaptive Optics Systems VI
Laird M. Close; Laura Schreiber; Dirk Schmidt, Editor(s)