Terrestrial Planet Finder Coronagraph High Accuracy Optical Propagation

The Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) project is considering several approaches to discovering planets orbiting stars far from earth and assessing their suitability to support life. One approach is based on a coronagraph design operating in the visible wavelength regime, which requires both very high surface quality, large aperture, telescope optics and advanced optical systems to reject direct, scattered, and diffracted starlight that is on the order of 1x109 brighter than the light reflected from the planet. The project has the need for advanced optical modeling and design tools that include physical optical calculations to support propagation results at a contrast level of 1x10-11 at the image plane of the coronagraph. The CODE V software is the most advanced software available for a wide variety of optical system modeling tasks and would be ideally suited for the TPF project once the proposed capabilities are integrated. Optical Research Associates proposes to extend capabilities of a proprietary method for beam propagation to support the optical modeling needs of the TPF coronagraph project. The result will be an optical design and analysis tool, available to only current CODE V product licensees, that provides another means for predicting the performance of this astronomical asset.