Performance comparison between JWST/MIRI+NIRCam & VLT/SPHERE for exoplanet detection

Performance comparison between JWST/MIRI and VLT/SPHERE for exoplanet detection Charles Hanot, Olivier Absil, Anthony Boccaletti, Céline Cavarroc, Jean Surdej In the context of exoplanet detection, a large majority of the 400 detected exoplanets have been found by indirect methods. Today, progress in the field of high contrast imaging has allowed direct images of several exoplanetary systems to be taken (cf. HR 8799, Fomalhaut). In the near future, several new instruments are going to dramatically improve our sensitivity to exoplanet detection. Among these, SPHERE ( Spectro Polarimetric High contrast Exoplanet REsearch ) at the VLT and MIRI ( Mid Infra-Red Instrument) onboard JWST will both be equipped with coronagraphs to reveal faint objects in the vicinity of nearby stars. In this paper, we make use of the most recent evolutionary models of young (sub-)stellar objects and exoplanets to derive their luminosities in order to compare the sensitivity of SPHERE to that of MIRI. From this comparison, we present a catalogue of targets which are particularly well suited for MIRI with possible detections of planets down to (sub-)Saturn masses.