Simulated Performance of Energy-resolving Detectors Towards Exoplanet Imaging with the Habitable Worlds Observatory
One of the primary science goals of the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) as defined by the Astro2020 decadal survey is the imaging of the first Earth-like planet around a Sun-like star.
A key technology gap towards reaching this goal are the development of ultra-low-noise photon counting detectors capable of measuring the incredibly low count rates coming from these planets which are at contrasts of ∼1×10−10.
Superconducting energy-resolving detectors (ERDs) are a promising technology for this purpose as, despite their technological challenges, needing to be cooled below their superconducting transition temperature (<1K), they have essentially zero read noise, dark current, or clock-induced charge, and can get the wavelength of each incident photon without the use of additional throughput-reducing filters or gratings that spread light over many pixels.
The use of these detectors on HWO will not only impact the science of the mission by decreasing the required exposure times for exo-Earth detection and characterization, but also in a wavefront sensing and control context when used for starlight suppression to generate a dark zone.
We show simulated results using both an EMCCD and an ERD to “dig a dark zone” demonstrating that ERDs can achieve the same final contrast as an EMCCD in about half of the total time. We also perform a simple case study using an exposure time calculator tool called the Error Budget Software (EBS) to determine the required integration times to detect water for HWO targets of interest using both EMCCDs and ERDs.
This shows that once a dark zone is achieved, using an ERD can decrease these exposure times by factors of 1.5–2 depending on the specific host star properties.
HWO EAC1-like optical model used for all WFS&C simulations — astro-ph.IM
Sarah Steiger, Laurent Pueyo, Emiel H. Por, Pin Chen, Rémi Soummer, Raphaël Pourcelot, Iva Laginja, Vanessa P. Bailey
Comments: 13 pages, 7 figures
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2409.05987 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2409.05987v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2409.05987
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Journal reference: Proc. SPIE 13092, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2024: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave; 130921W
Related DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3020603
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Submission history
From: Sarah Steiger
[v1] Mon, 9 Sep 2024 18:30:46 UTC (2,611 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.05987
Astrobiology
