Off-Line, Multi-Detector Intensity Interferometers II: Implications and Applications

Abstract

Intensity interferometry removes the stringent requirements on mechanical precision and atmospheric corrections that plague all amplitude interferometry techniques at the cost of severely limited sensitivity. A new idea we recently introduced, very high redundancy, alleviates this problem. It enables the relatively simple construction (~1cm mechanical precision) of a ground-based astronomical facility able to transform a two-dimensional field of point-like sources to a three-dimensional distribution of micro-arcsec resolved systems, each imaged in several optical bands. Each system will also have its high resolution residual timing, high quality (inside each band) spectra and light curve, emergent flux, effective temperature, polarization effects and perhaps some thermodynamic properties, all directly measured. All the above attributes can be measured in a single observation run of such a dedicated facility. We conclude that after three decades of abandonment optical intensity interferometry deserves another review, also as a ground-based alternative to the science goals of space interferometers.