Solving the Imaging Problem with Coherently Integrated Multiwavelength Data

TL;DR

This paper introduces methods for optical interferometric image reconstruction using coherently integrated multiwavelength data, overcoming atmospheric turbulence effects to recover complex visibilities and produce images.

Contribution

It presents novel techniques for coherently integrating optical interferometric data, enabling image reconstruction similar to radio imaging methods.

Findings

Successful recovery of complex visibilities for multiple sources

Produced high-quality images using standard radio imaging software

Demonstrated the effectiveness of the techniques in real observations

Abstract

Recovering images from optical interferometric observations is one of the major challenges in the field. Unlike the case of observations at radio wavelengths, in the optical the atmospheric turbulence changes the phases on a very short time scale, which results in corrupted phase measurements. In order to overcome these limitations, several groups developed image reconstruction techniques based only on squared visibility and closure phase information, which are unaffected by atmospheric turbulence. We present the results of two techniques used by our group, which employed coherently integrated data from the Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer. Based on these techniques we were able to recover complex visibilities for several sources and image them using standard radio imaging software. We describe these techniques, the corrections applied to the data, present the images of a few sources, and discuss the implications of these results.