Project description
Modern photodetector technology to study white dwarf sizes
Over 50 years ago, Hanbury-Brown and Twiss conducted experiments that allowed scientists to measure star sizes and inspired Roy Glauber’s quantum formalism of photon statistics. In the 1970s, interference-based optical imaging advanced but faced challenges associated with mechanical precision and atmospheric fluctuations. The ERC-funded IC4Stars project aims to overcome these challenges by using modern photon-counting techniques for quantum optics measurements and for studying quantum systems in space. Its goals include measuring the angular diameter of a white dwarf and searching for new quantum sources of radiation, such as random lasing.
Objective
The pioneering experiments of intensity correlations by Hanbury-Brown and Twiss more than 50 years ago not only allowed to measure the angular diameter of many bright stars, but it also motivated Roy Glauber to develop his quantum formalism of photon statistics. The advent of direct optical interferences of light collected by different telescopes developed in the beginning of the 70s, with superior performances in terms of signal to noise ratio and correspondingly reduced required observation time put an end to these first attempts of intensity correlation imaging for astrophysics. State of the art optical interference imaging is however limited by accessible baselines and the required mechanical precision for optical delay lines are limited in particular due to atmospheric fluctuations and at short wavelengths. In IC4Stars we will use modern photon counting techniques to perform quantum optics measurements and probe quantum systems in astrophysics. A first target will be a quantum degenerate Fermi gaz of electrons (a white dwarf) whose angular diameter is out of reach for direct optical imaging techniques. A second goal will be the search for quantum sources of radiation by looking for random lasing in astrophysics, to be detected by second order photon correlation.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesastronomyastrophysics
- natural sciencesphysical sciencestheoretical physicsparticle physicsphotons
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Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
75794 Paris
France