The Optics of Refractive Substructure
Michael D. Johnson, Ramesh Narayan
TL;DR
This paper introduces a simplified geometrical optics framework to estimate refractive scattering effects in the ionized interstellar medium, improving understanding of VLBI observations at extreme resolutions.
Contribution
It provides a semi-analytic method that reproduces previous results and derives new expressions for scattering-induced fluctuations in VLBI observables.
Findings
Exact reproduction of previous statistical results
New formulas for VLBI observable fluctuations
Monte Carlo method for arbitrary quantity calculations
Abstract
Newly recognized effects of refractive scattering in the ionized interstellar medium have broad implications for very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) at extreme angular resolutions. Building upon work by Blandford & Narayan (1985), we present a simplified, geometrical optics framework, which enables rapid, semi-analytic estimates of refractive scattering effects. We show that these estimates exactly reproduce previous results based on a more rigorous statistical formulation. We then derive new expressions for the scattering-induced fluctuations of VLBI observables such as closure phase, and we demonstrate how to calculate the fluctuations for arbitrary quantities of interest using a Monte Carlo technique.
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