Enhanced signal-to-noise ratio in Hanbury Brown Twiss interferometry by parametric amplification

TL;DR

This paper introduces an improved Hanbury Brown Twiss interferometry method that employs optical parametric amplifiers to significantly enhance the signal-to-noise ratio, enabling more accurate measurements of stellar angular diameters.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel interferometric scheme integrating optical parametric amplifiers to boost correlation signals in HBT measurements.

Findings

Signal-to-noise ratio increased by up to 400%

Enhanced accuracy in measuring stellar angular diameters

Potential for improved astronomical observations

Abstract

The Hanbury Brown Twiss (HBT) interferometer was proposed to observe intensity correlations of starlight to measure a star's angular diameter. As the intensity of light that reaches the detector from a star is very weak, one cannot usually get a workable signal-to-noise ratio. We propose an improved HBT interferometric scheme introducing optical parametric amplifiers into the system, to amplify the correlation signal, which is used to calculate the angular diameter. With the use of optical parametric amplifiers, the signal-to-noise ratio can be increased up to 400 percent.