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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Hill, Charles A., Kusaka, Akito
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.01153
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author Hill, Charles A.
Kusaka, Akito
author_facet Hill, Charles A.
Kusaka, Akito
contents Many modern millimeter and submillimeter (``mm-wave'') telescopes for astronomy are deploying more detectors by increasing detector pixel density, and with the rise of lithographed detector architectures and high-throughput readout techniques, it is becoming increasingly practical to overfill the focal plane. However, when the pixel pitch $p_{\rm pix}$ is small compared to the product of the wavelength $λ$ and the focal ratio $F$, or $p_{\mathrm{pix}} \lesssim 1.2 F λ$, the Bose term of the photon noise correlates between neighboring detector pixels due to the Hanbury Brown & Twiss (HBT) effect. When this HBT effect is non-negligible, the array-averaged sensitivity scales with detector count $N_{\mathrm{det}}$ less favorably than the uncorrelated limit of $N_{\mathrm{det}}^{-1/2}$. In this paper, we present a general prescription to calculate this HBT correlation based on a quantum optics formalism and extend it to polarization-sensitive detectors. We then estimate the impact of HBT correlations on the sensitivity of a model mm-wave telescope and discuss the implications for focal-plane design.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2309_01153
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Photon noise correlations in millimeter-wave telescopes
Hill, Charles A.
Kusaka, Akito
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Optics
Many modern millimeter and submillimeter (``mm-wave'') telescopes for astronomy are deploying more detectors by increasing detector pixel density, and with the rise of lithographed detector architectures and high-throughput readout techniques, it is becoming increasingly practical to overfill the focal plane. However, when the pixel pitch $p_{\rm pix}$ is small compared to the product of the wavelength $λ$ and the focal ratio $F$, or $p_{\mathrm{pix}} \lesssim 1.2 F λ$, the Bose term of the photon noise correlates between neighboring detector pixels due to the Hanbury Brown & Twiss (HBT) effect. When this HBT effect is non-negligible, the array-averaged sensitivity scales with detector count $N_{\mathrm{det}}$ less favorably than the uncorrelated limit of $N_{\mathrm{det}}^{-1/2}$. In this paper, we present a general prescription to calculate this HBT correlation based on a quantum optics formalism and extend it to polarization-sensitive detectors. We then estimate the impact of HBT correlations on the sensitivity of a model mm-wave telescope and discuss the implications for focal-plane design.
title Photon noise correlations in millimeter-wave telescopes
topic Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Optics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.01153