Focal plane modal estimation of high-order wavefront drifts on coronagraphic testbeds
Abstract
The upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) requires precise wavefront stability over long observation periods to directly image Exo-Earths, which are 10 orders of magnitude dimmer than their host star. Dark zone maintenance (DZM) has been proposed as a focal plane high-order wavefront sensing and control (HOWFSC) strategy to mitigate thermal and mechanical instabilities that cause slow-evolving high-order wavefront drifts, which ultimately degrade contrast. Here we present a modal dark zone maintenance (MDZM) algorithm that uses an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) to estimate the drifting wavefront modes in the basis of the deformable mirror (DM) actuators used for control. The estimator derives information across the entire focal plane from probe-pair images, addressing deficiencies of DZM, and directly obtains a DM command, eliminating the need for Electric Field Conjugation (EFC) and its regularization parameter. MDZM has been demonstrated in simulation and in hardware on the Decadal Survey Testbed (DST) at NASA JPL. These experiments have maintained a normalized intensity (NI) of ∼ 3 × 10−10 for over 36 hours, and have reduced the gap to the photon-derived theoretical bounds compared to DZM. MDZM also provides an estimate of naturally occurring drift on the testbed, offering potential system identification capabilities. To evaluate the robustness of MDZM, a parameter scan is conducted on DST, spanning exposure times and drift rates. Additionally, realistic observing scenarios for HWO will involve broadband images with a 20% bandwidth, rather than the 2.5% narrowband images previously used in MDZM testbed demonstrations. Therefore, we tested MDZM in simulation using broadband sensing images with a 10% bandwidth, using the FALCO software package with a model based on DST, and compared its performance against MDZM runs using narrowband images.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{manojkumar2026focal,
title = {{Focal plane modal estimation of high-order wavefront drifts on coronagraphic testbeds}},
author = {Saikrishna Manojkumar and Susan F. Redmond and Leonid Pogorelyuk and Christine L. Page and Garreth Ruane and Niyati Desai and Kerri Cahoy},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.38014},
eprint = {2610.38014},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.38014},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Focal plane modal estimation of high-order wavefront drifts on coronagraphic testbeds
AU - Saikrishna Manojkumar
AU - Susan F. Redmond
AU - Leonid Pogorelyuk
AU - Christine L. Page
AU - Garreth Ruane
AU - Niyati Desai
AU - Kerri Cahoy
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/27
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.38014
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.38014
AB - The upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) requires precise wavefront stability over long observation periods to directly image Exo-Earths, which are 10 orders of magnitude dimmer than their host star. Dark zone maintenance (DZM) has been proposed as a focal plane high-order wavefront sensing and control (HOWFSC) strategy to mitigate thermal and mechanical instabilities that cause slow-evolving high-order wavefront drifts, which ultimately degrade contrast. Here we present a modal dark zone maintenance (MDZM) algorithm that uses an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) to estimate the drifting wavefront modes in the basis of the deformable mirror (DM) actuators used for control. The estimator derives information across the entire focal plane from probe-pair images, addressing deficiencies of DZM, and directly obtains a DM command, eliminating the need for Electric Field Conjugation (EFC) and its regularization parameter. MDZM has been demonstrated in simulation and in hardware on the Decadal Survey Testbed (DST) at NASA JPL. These experiments have maintained a normalized intensity (NI) of ∼ 3 × 10^−10 for over 36 hours, and have reduced the gap to the photon-derived theoretical bounds compared to DZM. MDZM also provides an estimate of naturally occurring drift on the testbed, offering potential system identification capabilities. To evaluate the robustness of MDZM, a parameter scan is conducted on DST, spanning exposure times and drift rates. Additionally, realistic observing scenarios for HWO will involve broadband images with a 20% bandwidth, rather than the 2.5% narrowband images previously used in MDZM testbed demonstrations. Therefore, we tested MDZM in simulation using broadband sensing images with a 10% bandwidth, using the FALCO software package with a model based on DST, and compared its performance against MDZM runs using narrowband images.
ER -