First experimental demonstration of temporal hypertelescope operation with a laboratory prototype

TL;DR

This paper presents the first experimental demonstration of a Temporal HyperTelescope, showcasing its imaging capabilities and PSF performance in a laboratory setting with an 8-telescope array.

Contribution

It is the first to experimentally demonstrate a Temporal HyperTelescope with an 8-telescope array and analyze its imaging performance and limitations.

Findings

PSF exhibits a dynamics of 300

Successful imaging of an unbalanced binary star

Recorded 2D PSF despite non-optimized array

Abstract

In this paper, we report the first experimental demonstration of a Temporal HyperTelescope (THT). Our breadboard including 8 telescopes is firstly tested in a manual cophasing configuration on a 1D object. The Point Spread Function (PSF) is measured and exhibits a dynamics in the range of 300. A quantitative analysis of the potential biases demonstrates that this limitation is related to the residual phase fluctuation on each interferometric arm. Secondly, an unbalanced binary star is imaged demonstrating the imaging capability of THT. In addition, 2D PSF is recorded even if the telescope array is not optimized for this purpose.