Abstract
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.
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Acknowledgements
The I2C pilot experiment is supported by INPHYNI and Lagrange laboratories, Döblin Federation and grants from OCA and the Excellence Initiative UCA-JEDI from University Côte d’Azur. We are grateful to A. Dussaux for his valuable contribution to this project. We also thank E. Samain, C. Courde and J. Chabé (GeoAzur lab., OCA) for fruitful discussions about space and time metrology. Ph. Bério from Lagrange Laboratory (OCA) is also kindly acknowledged.
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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Future of Optical-infrared Interferometry in Europe
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Rivet, JP., Vakili, F., Lai, O. et al. Optical long baseline intensity interferometry: prospects for stellar physics. Exp Astron 46, 531–542 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10686-018-9595-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10686-018-9595-0