Advanced Multi-spectral Imaging using Novel wavefront sensors with Optical photon-counting detectors (AMINO)

Overview

Broadband spectral imaging of exoplanets through the combination of wavefront analyzers and innovative multispectral detectors.

PI : Johan Mazoyer (LIRA)

Principaux responsables :

Pierre BAUDOZ, Axel POTIER (LIRA)

Faouzi BOUSSAHA (LUX)

Mamadou N’DIAYE (Lagrange)

Arthur VIGAN, Vincent CHAMBOULEYRON (LAM)

Autres personnels scientifiques :

Raphaël GALICHER, Moustapha DEKKALI (LIRA)

Christine CHAUMONT (LUX)

Kjetil DOHLEN (LAM) Iva LAGINJA, Olivier LAI (Lagrange)

In three decades, more than 6,000 exoplanets have been discovered, but their diversity raises questions about the rarity of systems like ours and the existence of nearby habitable planets. Projects such as NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory and the PCS spectrograph of the future European ELT telescope aim to overcome these challenges by detecting exo-Earths using very high-contrast imaging, which is essential for analyzing their atmospheres and searching for biosignatures. A key challenge is the precise control of optical aberrations using deformable mirrors to create dark holes where starlight is suppressed to reveal very faint planets. A key difficulty is maintaining these dark zones over broad spectral bands, which is essential for performing atmospheric spectroscopy and detecting biosignatures. The main innovation of this project is to combine three “dark-hole” techniques, developed in French laboratories, with innovative multispectral detectors, allowing simultaneous estimation of the wavefront at several wavelengths.