Towards Image Synthesis with Photon Counting Stellar Intensity Interferometry

TL;DR

This paper discusses advancements in stellar intensity interferometry using photon counting techniques, focusing on optimizing data processing pipelines and developing algorithms for high-rate photon data to enable image synthesis.

Contribution

It introduces new methods and pipelines for processing high-rate photon-counting data and demonstrates progress towards image synthesis with photon-counting stellar intensity interferometry.

Findings

Development of optimized pipelines for high photon rate data

Creation of algorithms for cross-correlation of large time series

Progress in preliminary image synthesis pipeline

Abstract

Stellar intensity interferometry (SII) is based on the correlation of the light intensity fluctuations of a star detected at two or more telescopes, with no need to combine the collected photons directly. A measurement of the correlation in full "photon-counting mode" was experimented with fast photon counters in Italy (2016-2020) and is currently being adapted to the ASTRI Mini-Array. Performing image synthesis with "photon-counting" SII requires a series of preparatory activities that involve the optimization of the pipelines for the treatment of time series acquired at extremely high photon rates, the development of efficient and innovative algorithms for the cross-correlation of the arrival times in large time series and the development of a preliminary version of a dedicated pipeline for the synthesis of images starting from interferometric data. Here we present the project and the present status of the activities.