Paper 14145-280
Paper 14145-280
AstroPIC III: advancing the near-infrared photonic integrated coronagraph for the Habitable Worlds Observatory
9 July 2026 • 17:30 - 19:00 CEST | Room B4-M3
Abstract
The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), identified as the top priority flagship for astrophysics in the 2020 Decadal Survey, requires a coronagraph instrument reaching ten orders of magnitude starlight suppression to directly image Earth-like planets. Coronagraphs based on Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) offer potentially game-changing advantages for this mission by combining the efficiency and aggressive inner working angles of advanced nulling architectures with the compactness and reconfigurability of integrated photonics.
This third paper in the series provides an overview of technology development efforts for AstroPIC, a near-infrared photonic integrated coronagraph concept for HWO. We review the design and recent high contrast results for AstroPIC, which reached better than 1e-9 contrast ratios with our silicon PIC prototype, including functional system-level demonstrations with a free-space coupling system. We outline the near-infrared science enabled including compati
Presenter
NASA Ames Research Ctr. (United States)
Dan Sirbu received a PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University in 2014, and prior to this a BSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alberta in 2008. He is currently a research scientist in the Space Science and Astrophysics Branch at NASA Ames Research Center. His research interests are in photonics, novel wavefront control and estimation techniques, performance modeling and design of starlight suppressions systems for high-contrast imaging of exoplanets.