Experimental verification of simulated contrast performance for the AstroPIC photonic coronagraph

Photonic coronagraphy has the potential to dramatically improve our ability to target faint, small-separation exoplanets with future missions such as the Habitable Worlds Observatory. A practical photonic integrated circuit (PIC) coronagraph will need to create a dark zone in multiple output channels (to provide spatial about detected exoplanets) and have finite spectral bandwidth. Previous simulations show that a PIC with a small number of channels can create a ~2% spectral band with ~10^-10 contrast in a single output channel and can create a monochromatic dark zone in multiple output channels in the presence of realistic directional coupler biases. We extend these results to the lab with the AstroPIC Cycle 1 experiment. We first dig a single-channel dark zone with AstroPIC for a 2% band at 1550 nm. We then dig a monochromatic dark zone in 6 simultaneous output channels. We quantify the impacts of noise and model uncertainty on contrast for both scenarios.