2023/07/13 by M.D. Galanis, Galanis, Marios, Ken Van Tilburg +5 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) #Optics (physics.optics) #Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR) #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2307.06989
openalex publication_date 2023/07/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
We develop in detail a recently proposed optical-path modification of astronomical intensity interferometers. Extended-Path Intensity Correlation (EPIC) introduces a tunable path extension, enabling differential astrometry of multiple compact sources such as stars and quasars at separations of up to a few arcseconds. Combined with other recent technological advances in spectroscopy and fast single-photon detection, a ground-based intensity interferometer array can achieve microarcsecond resolution and even better light-centroiding accuracy on bright sources of magnitude m \lesssim 15. We lay out the theory and technical requirements of EPIC, and discuss the scientific potential. Promising applications include astrometric lensing of stars and quasar images, binary-orbit characterization, exoplanet detection, Galactic acceleration measurements and calibration of the cosmic distance ladder. The introduction of the path extension thus significantly increases the scope of intensity interferometry while reaching unprecedented levels of relative astrometric precision.