A photonic coronagraph architecture achieving theoretical near ideal performance

Theoretical ideal coronagraph performance is achieved when the light from an exoplanet can be coherently decomposed into a linear combination of spatial modes indistinguishable from that containing starlight, and an orthogonal mode. The intensity in the exoplanet mode orthogonal from the stellar modes as a function of separation from the star represents theoretical ideal coronagraph performance. Here we introduce a photonic coronagraph architecture capable of achieving this near-ideal exoplanet throughput at small inner working angles. We will review progress at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab on prototype hardware implementing this photonic coronagraph concept and discuss our progress at device calibration and closed-loop control required for a photonic coronagraph in a changing wavefront environment.