Description
The quest to peer deeper into the Universe drives the development of telescopes with ever greater resolution. Interferometers offer a way to greatly increase resolution by synthesising an aperture equivalent to the distance between interferometer elements. This has been enormously successful in radio astronomy, but at optical frequencies, the shorter wavelength and inability to record photons for later processing introduces major technical challenges that limit the scale of optical interferometers. Currently the largest is the 330 m Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) with a best resolution of 300 µas.
Recent progress in quantum technologies and quantum information theory show great promise in providing the means to scale interferometers observing in the near infra-red to hundreds of kilometres in span, enabling a resolution on the order of 1 microarsecond. Such telescopes would have outstanding applications in studying star formation and stellar atmospheres, the formation of exoplanets, and the highly curved spacetime near the event horizons of black holes.
This talk will present the results of a series of experiments at the University of Western Australia [1-5] applying quantum imaging to astronomical imaging cases, culminating the in demonstration of quantum-optimal imaging using a 170 km-span optical interferometer. A 170 km span interferometer observing at 1550 nm would have a resolution around 2 µas, an order of magnitude better than any existing interferometer.
We will then present a pathway, including discussing the use of quantum memories, next-generation low-loss fibres, and advanced adaptive optics, towards realising a practical interferometer with 1 µas resolution.
[1] https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.563503
[2] https://doi.org/10.3390/s25175395
[3] https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.573054
[4] https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.18025
[5] https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.586783
| I am the presenting author | Yes |
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