Fluctuations of Photon Arrival Times in Free Atmosphere

TL;DR

This paper models the delay and fluctuations in photon arrival times caused by atmospheric conditions for high-precision astrophysical measurements, providing a tool for improving timing accuracy in telescopic observations.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed model for photon delay fluctuations due to atmospheric effects, applicable to various telescopes and conditions, with a theoretical approach to Fried radius calculation.

Findings

Model achieves picosecond accuracy in delay predictions

Applicable to ESO telescopes and adaptable to other sites

Provides a theoretical framework for Fried radius estimation

Abstract

In this paper we calculate the delay of the arrival times of visible photons on the focal plane of a telescope and its fluctuations as function of local atmospheric conditions (temperature, pressure, chemical composition, seeing values) and telescope diameter. The aim is to provide a model for delay and its fluctuations accurate to the picosecond level, as required by several very high time resolution astrophysical applications, such as comparison of radio and optical data on Giant Radio Bursts from optical pulsars, and Hanbury Brown Twiss Intensity Interferometry with Cerenkov light detectors. The results here presented have been calculated for the ESO telescopes in Chile (NTT, VLT, E-ELT), but the model can be easily applied to other sites and telescope diameters. Finally, we describe a theoretical mathematical model for calculating the Fried radius through the study of delay time fluctuations.