Abstract
Astronomical interferometry, the coherent combination of light from two or more telescopes, can provide images of celestial objects with very high angular resolution. The van Cittert–Zernike theorem forms the theoretical foundation of interferometric measurements and for the reconstruction of images from interferometric data. The closure phase method and phase self-calibration techniques retain useful phase information even if the individual phases are corrupted by instrumental errors. The introduction of a π phase shift in one of the interferometer arms leads to the rejection of on-axis light through destructive interference, enabling observations with extremely high contrast. The most critical technological requirements for space interferometry concern path length control, formation flying, fringe tracking, and specialized optical components. Concepts for space-borne interferometers have been developed covering a wide range of scientific applications and wavelength regimes.
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Notes
- 1.
For simplicity, we will mostly ignore the complications brought about by dispersion for converting between delay, optical path length and fringe phase.
- 2.
Note that the there is already a phase shift of π between the two detectors shown in Figure 17.1 due to the additional reflection at the beam combiner for one of them. Thus the sum of the intensities measured by them is independent of V and D int, as required by conservation of energy.
- 3.
In the absence of dispersion, temporal delay τ and spatial delay \(D = c\cdot \tau\) can be used interchangeably.
- 4.
Most astronomical sources can be considered to be spatially incoherent. Counterexamples are the radiation fields of sources affected by scintillation in the interstellar medium or in the Earth’s atmosphere.
- 5.
Note that depending on the beam combination scheme, most or all of the \(\left ({ N \atop 3} \right )\) closure phases may be (photon-)statistically independent realizations of the \(\left ({ N-1 \atop 2} \right )\) algebraically independent closure phases.
- 6.
Representing the planet by a point-like sky brightness distribution \(B(\xi,\eta ) =\delta (\xi _{0},\eta _{0})\) with \((\xi _{0},\eta _{0})\neq (0, 0)\), one can see from Equations 17.1 and 17.7 that rotating the interferometer (i.e., \(u = u_{0}\cos \omega \,t,v = u_{0}\sin \omega \,t\)) leads to a modulated output signal.
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Quirrenbach, A. (2013). Interferometric imaging from space. In: Huber, M.C.E., Pauluhn, A., Culhane, J.L., Timothy, J.G., Wilhelm, K., Zehnder, A. (eds) Observing Photons in Space. ISSI Scientific Report Series, vol 9. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7804-1_17
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