Research contract on polychromatic wavefront sensing and control

Contexte :

Over the past three decades, the discovery of nearly 6000 exoplanets has revealed an extraordinary diversity in planetary systems. Direct imaging —particularly coronagraphy—has emerged as one of the most promising methods for detecting and characterizing exoplanets in the habitable zone (HZ) of their host star. Such an approach is envisioned in future large facilities, e.g., NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) in space and ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) with the Planetary Camera and Spectrograph (PCS) on the ground.

The AMINO project (co-PIs: J. Mazoyer and V. Chambouleyron) aims to address some of the challenges associated with direct imaging, particularly for observing exo-Earths with planet/star flux ratios down to 10^-10. One of them is the precise control of the incoming light aberrations with deformable optics to maintain areas of high-contrast regions (dark holes) over long periods of time and over a large spectral bandwitdh, which is critical for spectroscopy of faint planets.

The AMINO project focuses on advancing Focal Plane Wavefront Sensing (FPWFS) techniques, to estimate aberrations and create or maintain dark-holes. Our team has pioneered some of these techniques, and is currently involved in their integration in both space and ground-based technological demonstrators: Coronagraph Instrument (CGI) on NASA’s Roman Space Telescope and SPHERE+ on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). But the efficiency of these FPWFS drops quickly in large spectral broadband: current instruments must rely on slow, sequential measurements in several narrow bands, which limit their performance.

Candidatures :

Deadline: Friday 12 June 2026 (23:59 CET)

The application is constituted of the following documents:

• Cover letter, up to 3 pages, highlighting your past research and how it relates to the project
• Curriculum vitae, including a full list of publications
• 2 letters of reference to be sent directly to Dr. Arthur Vigan (arthur.vigan@lam.fr) and Dr. Axel Potier (axel.potier@obspm.fr) before the deadline

The CV and research statement must be submitted through the CNRS job portal:

https://emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/UMR7326-ANAMEK-129/Default.aspx?lang=EN

Applications not submitted through this portal will not be considered.