  High performance coronagraphic imaging of faint structures around bright
stars at small angular separations requires fine control of tip, tilt and other
low order aberrations. When such errors occur upstream of a coronagraph, they
results in starlight leakage which reduces the dynamic range of the instrument.
This issue has been previously addressed for occulting coronagraphs by sensing
the starlight before or at the coronagraphic focal plane. One such solution,
the coronagraphic low order wave-front sensor (CLOWFS) uses a partially
reflective focal plane mask to measure pointing errors for Lyot-type
coronagraphs.
  To deal with pointing errors in low inner working angle phase mask
coronagraphs which do not have a reflective focal plane mask, we have adapted
the CLOWFS technique. This new concept relies on starlight diffracted by the
focal plane phase mask being reflected by the Lyot stop towards a sensor which
reliably measures low order aberrations such as tip and tilt. This reflective
Lyot-based wavefront sensor is a linear reconstructor which provides high
sensitivity tip-tilt error measurements with phase mask coronagraphs.
  Simulations show that the measurement accuracy of pointing errors with
realistic post adaptive optics residuals are approx. 10^-2 lambda/D per mode at
lambda = 1.6 micron for a four quadrant phase mask. In addition, we demonstrate
the open loop measurement pointing accuracy of 10^-2 lambda/D at 638 nm for a
four quadrant phase mask in the laboratory.
