Description: The approach is to demonstrate the concept in the Ames Coronagraph Experiment (ACE) laboratory utilizing the second ACE optical bench that it is currently equipped with a PIAA coronagraph and a Kilo DM. Since a sparse DM does not exist yet, sparse DM functionality is emulated using a normal 32x32 BMC Kilo DM and actuate one of every 3 actuators. The rest of the actuators are commanded to stay flat. The effective result is a 10x10 actuator sparse DM with a fill factor of approximately 10%. A proven speckle nulling algorithm is run to execute wavefront control and apply the correction to the emulated Sparse DM. In parallel, the same system is simulated using the Ames super computer to have a comparison between our models and laboratory performance, to validate the models, and to identify and eliminate hardware limiting factors.

Benefits: Current high-contrast imaging systems for detection of exoplanets implement wavefront control using traditional deformable mirrors (DM) developed for atmospheric turbulence correction, which require large strokes, high-speed, and continuous phase correction. However, high-contrast imaging has different requirements. Thus, developing a specialized DM for this application would enable meeting demanding requirements for future exoplanet imaging flagship missions, such as 128x128 actuator DMs, which are currently not available. This work aims to advance the Sparse Wave Front Control and demonstrate it in the laboratory, validating the simulations. We demonstrated a new technique which promises to improve direct imaging of exoplanets on space telescope missions. The technique is called Sparse Wavefront Control (SWFC). It was demonstrated in the lab at the Ames Coronagraph Experiment (ACE), with validated simulations ran on the Ames supercomputer, bringing this tech nology to TRL 3.