Intensity interferometry for observation of dark objects

Abstract

We analyze an intensity interferometry measurement carried out with two point-like detectors facing a distant source (e.g., a star) that may be partially occluded by an absorptive object (e.g., a planet). Such a measurement, based on the perturbation of the observed covariance function due to the object's presence, can provide information of the object complementary to a direct optical intensity measurement. In particular, one can infer the orientation of the object's transient trajectory. We identify the key parameters that impact this perturbation and show that its magnitude is equal to the magnitude of the intensity variation caused by the same object. In astronomy applications, this value may be very small, so a differential measurement may be necessary. Finally, we discuss the signal-to-noise ratio that may be expected in this type of measurement.

References in corpus (1)

• A unified evaluation of iterative projection algorithms for phase retrieval

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Optical aperture synthesis with electronically connected telescopes
• Optical Intensity Interferometry through Atmospheric Turbulence
• Long-baseline optical intensity interferometry: Laboratory demonstration of diffraction-limited imaging
• Intensity interferometry: Optical imaging with kilometer baselines
• Photon statistics and signal to noise ratio for incoherent diffraction imaging
• Stellar intensity interferometry over kilometer baselines: Laboratory simulation of observations with the Cherenkov Telescope Array