Astronomical demonstration of an optical vortex coronagraph.

Using an optical vortex coronagraph and simple adaptive optics techniques, we have made the first convincing demonstration of an optical vortex coronagraph that is coupled to a star gazing telescope. We suppressed by 97% the primary star of a resolvable binary system, Cor Caroli. The stars had an angular separation of 1.9lambda/D at our imaging camera. The secondary star suffered no suppression from the vortex lens.

Low-order aberration sensitivity of an optical vortex coronagraph.

We describe a high-contrast imaging technique capable of directly measuring light from a terrestrial planet by using a vortex mask of topological charge m = 5. We demonstrate that this technique is relatively insensitive to low-order aberrations and compare its performance to that of a band-limited Lyot coronagraph.

Optical vortex coronagraph.

We describe a method to observe dim exoplanets that eliminates light from the parent star across the entire exit pupil without sacrificing light from the planet by use of a vortex mask of topological charge m = 2.