Abstract

High resolution imaging is achieved using increasingly larger apertures and successively shorter wavelengths. Optical aperture synthesis is an important high-resolution imaging technology used in astronomy. Conventional long baseline amplitude interferometry is susceptible to uncontrollable phase fluctuations, and the technical difficulty increases rapidly as the wavelength decreases. The intensity interferometry inspired by HBT experiment is essentially insensitive to phase fluctuations, but suffers from a narrow spectral bandwidth which results in a lack of effective photons.

In this study, we propose optical synthetic aperture imaging based on spatial intensity interferometry. This not only realizes diffraction-limited optical aperture synthesis in a single shot, but also enables imaging with a wide spectral bandwidth, which greatly improves the optical energy efficiency of intensity interferometry. And this method is insensitive to the optical path difference between the sub-apertures. Simulations and experiments present optical aperture synthesis diffraction-limited imaging through spatial intensity interferometry in a 100 nm spectral width of visible light, whose maximum optical path difference between the sub-apertures reaches 69λ.

This technique is expected to provide a solution for optical aperture synthesis over kilometer-long baselines at optical wavelengths.