Single-Photon Intensity Interferometry (SPIIFy): utilizing available telescopes

Pilyavsky, Genady; Mauskopf, Philip Daniel; Smith, N.; Schroeder, Edward; Sinclair, Adrian; Belle, Gerald van; Hinkel, Natalie R.; Scowen, Paul A.

doi:10.1093/mnras/stx272

Cited by 16 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…SII has re-emerged as a viable technique for high-angular resolution astronomy primarily due to the potential of outfitting current and future large diameter (> 10 m) telescope arrays with SII capabilities [12,13]. A suitable SII instrument requires recording the star-light intensity with nanosecond level time-resolution and then correlating the intensities between telescope pairs.…”

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confidence: 99%

Demonstration of stellar intensity interferometry with the four VERITAS telescopes

et al. 2020

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High angular resolution observations at optical wavelengths provide valuable insights in stellar astrophysics [1, 2], directly measuring fundamental stellar parameters [3, 4], and probing stellar atmospheres, circumstellar disks [5], elongation of rapidly rotating stars [6], and pulsations of Cepheid variable stars [7]. The angular size of most stars are of order one milli-arcsecond or less, and to spatially resolve stellar disks and features at this scale requires an optical interferometer using an array of telescopes with baselines on the order of hundreds of meters. We report on the successful implementation of a stellar intensity interferometry system developed for the four VERITAS imaging atmospheric-Cherenkov telescopes. The system was used to measure the angular diameter of the two sub-mas stars β Canis Majoris and Orionis with a precision better than 5%. The system utilizes an off-line approach where starlight intensity fluctuations recorded at each telescope are correlated post-observation. The technique can be readily scaled onto tens to hundreds of telescopes, providing a capability that has proven technically challenging to current generation optical amplitude interferometry observatories. This work demonstrates the feasibility of performing astrophysical measurements with imaging atmospheric-Cherenkov telescope arrays as intensity interferometers and the promise for integrating an intensity interferometry system within future observatories such as the Cherenkov Telescope Array.

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confidence: 99%

Demonstration of stellar intensity interferometry with the four VERITAS telescopes

et al. 2020

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“…The revival of intensity interferometry half a century after the pioneering work by Hanbury Brown and Twiss suggests that these techniques are promised to open new opportunities for very high angular resolution observations in the future, specially in the visible wavelengths, down to the violet if the site transparency permits. Two approaches have been proposed until now : the first one is based upon the use of existing or foreseen Cerenkov telescope arrays (Dravins and LeBohec, 2008;Matthews et al, 2017), and the second one is to use existing seeing limited optical telescopes (Zampieri et al, 2016;Pilyavsky et al, 2017;Guerin et al, 2017). Simulations and laboratory experiments confirm the imaging potential of HBT arrays whatever Cerenkov or optical.…”

Section: Prospects and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optical long baseline intensity interferometry: prospects for stellar physics

et al. 2018

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More than sixty years after the first intensity correlation experiments by Hanbury Brown and Twiss, there is renewed interest for intensity interferometry techniques for high angular resolution studies of celestial sources. We report on a successful attempt to measure the bunching peak in the intensity correlation function for bright stellar sources with 1 meter telescopes (I2C project). We propose further improvements of our preliminary experiments of spatial interferometry between two 1 m telescopes, and discuss the possibility to export our method to existing large arrays of telescopes.Keywords Temporal and spatial photon bunching · micro-arc-second interferometry · in the optical wavelengths

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“…The NSII used ∆t = 10 ns. Nowadays, ∆t = 1 ns is common and ∆t = 0.1 ns is possible (Pilyavsky et al 2017). Thus, one night of observing could have > 10 14 data points.…”

Section: Properties Of the Scaled Correlationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The theory of intensity interferometry revisited

Saha

2020

Preprint

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With the current revival of interest in astronomical intensity interferometry, it is interesting to revisit the associated theory, which was developed in the 1950s and 1960s. This paper argues that intensity interferometry can be understood as an extension of Fraunhofer diffraction to incoherent light. Interference patterns are still produced, but they are speckle-like and transient, changing on a time scale of 1/∆ν (where ∆ν is the frequency bandwidth) known as the coherence time. Bright fringes average less than one photon per coherence time, hence fringes change before they can be observed. But very occasionally, two or even more photons may be detected from an interference pattern within a coherence time. These rare coincident photons provide information about the underlying transient interference pattern, and hence about the source brightness distribution. Thinking in terms of transient sub-photon interference patterns makes it easy to see why intensity interferometry will have large optical-path tolerance, and be immune to atmospheric seeing. The unusual signal-to-noise properties also become evident. We illustrate the unobservable but conceptually useful transient interference patterns, and their observable correlation signal, with three simulated examples: (i) an elongated source like Achernar, (ii) a three-star system like Algol, and (iii) a crescent source that roughly mimics an exoplanet transit or perhaps the M87 black hole environment. Of these, (i) and (ii) are good targets for currently-planned setups, while (iii) is interesting to think about for the longer term.

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Single-Photon Intensity Interferometry (SPIIFy): utilizing available telescopes

Cited by 16 publications

References 30 publications

Demonstration of stellar intensity interferometry with the four VERITAS telescopes

Demonstration of stellar intensity interferometry with the four VERITAS telescopes

Optical long baseline intensity interferometry: prospects for stellar physics

The theory of intensity interferometry revisited

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