Peculiarity of Lyot Coronagraphy for Highly Segmented Apertures

European Southern Observatory, Karl Schwarzschildstr. 2, 85748 Garching bei Muenchen, Germany

Abstract

The existing high contrast imaging techniques cannot be applied directly to the telescope of the diameter 30–100 m without taking into account the specific characteristics of a segmented surface. While the increase in telescope diameter is an advantage for the high contrast range science, the segmentation sets a limit on the performance of the coronagraph. In particular, diffraction from intersegment gaps sets a floor to the achievable extinction of the starlight. Masking out the gaps in the Lyot plane although helps increasing the contrast, does not solve completely the problem: the high spatial frequency component of the diffractive light remains. In the paper I suggest using a Lyot stop which produces a phase-amplitude modulation in order to reduce the effect of segmentation.