{"id":84145,"date":"2016-07-11T17:16:05","date_gmt":"2016-07-11T14:16:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.technion.ac.il\/blog\/telescopes-beyond-the-diffraction-limit\/"},"modified":"2016-07-11T17:16:05","modified_gmt":"2016-07-11T14:16:05","slug":"telescopes-beyond-the-diffraction-limit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technion.ac.il\/en\/blog\/telescopes-beyond-the-diffraction-limit\/","title":{"rendered":"Telescopes Beyond the Diffraction Limit"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Technique Could Improve Angular Resolution of Telescopes Beyond the Diffraction Limit<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

The angular resolution of any optical imaging system, from cameras and microscopes to telescopes, is fundamentally constrained by diffraction, the bending of light waves around obstacles in their path<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Prof. Erez N. Ribak<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The angular resolution of a telescope is the smallest angle between two objects that still can be resolved as separate things; in a telescope with high angular resolution, those objects can be very close together and yet still appear distinct.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a new paper published in the journal <\/span>Optics Letters<\/span><\/i><\/a>, from <\/span>The Optical Society<\/span><\/a> (OSA), a research team now proposes a way around the diffraction limit of telescopes\u2014one that could potentially enable even moderately sized telescopes to obtain images with very high angular resolution.<\/span><\/p>\n

The usable angular resolution of ground-based telescopes can be increased using adaptive objects (AO) systems, which compensate in real-time for the blurring effects of Earth\u2019s atmosphere and ideally restore imagery to diffraction-limited resolution. However, says adaptive optics expert Agla\u00e9 N. Kellerer, <\/span>University of Cambridge<\/span><\/a>, United Kingdom, as telescope sizes increase, the correction becomes increasingly more complex. \u201cIn 1989, the first astronomical prototype had 19 correction elements and a 150-hertz sampling rate. Current systems have several thousand correction elements and sampling rates above 1000 Hz\u2014and this is not the end of the line,\u201d says Kellerer. <\/span><\/p>\n

Kellerer and her co-author Erez N. Ribak, <\/span>Technion\u2013Israel Institute of Technology<\/span><\/a>, Israel, now propose that it may be possible to improve the angular resolution of a telescope beyond the diffraction limit, using a combination of photon amplification and the statistical properties of stimulated photons versus spontaneous photons. <\/span><\/p>\n

Consider a photon emitted by an astronomical object. Before the photon is actually detected by a given telescope, all that is known of its location is that it exists at some point on an immense spherical wave centered on the astronomical object and extending all the way to the telescope. Once the telescope\u2019s detector records the photon, however, the photon\u2019s pathway is narrowed to within an area constrained by the telescope\u2019s aperture. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle indicates that because the path of the photon is now better known, the corresponding uncertainty in its momentum must increase. This limits the resolution of the telescope.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, say Kellerer and Ribak, this limit applies only to independent photons; with sets of coherent or entangled photons, the limit can be smaller. And that is key to their idea. \u201cWe propose to use photon amplification\u2014stimulated emission\u2014to overcome the diffraction limit in astronomy,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Specifically, the researchers propose that excited atoms could be placed between the telescope aperture and its photon detector. When an astronomical photon enters the telescope, it will stimulate the emission of identical photons.\u00a0\u201cThese photons arrive simultaneously on the detector and spread over the diffraction pattern,\u201d Kellerer explains. \u201cIf the incoming photon stimulates the emission of 100 photons, the precision on the determination of the photon\u2019s incoming direction is improved by a factor of 10.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

The stimulated emission would be accompanied by spontaneous emission that contributes noise. For that reason, scientists previously had discarded the idea of using photon amplification to improve astronomical imaging.\u00a0Kellerer and Ribak, however, suggest using only stimulated photon bursts that are above a particular size. Astronomical photons that generate small photon bursts have a larger noise component and are discarded, reducing the overall noise.\u00a0\u201cThis might allow us to overcome the diffraction limit,\u201d she says. <\/span><\/p>\n

One potential downside of the proposed technique is a loss of sensitivity in the images produced. \u201cIt is a price to pay,\u201d she admits, \u201cbut it is reassuring: if we found a means to overcome the diffraction limit at <\/span>no<\/span><\/i> cost, we would be in contradiction with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and we would thus certainly be wrong.\u201d (In addition, she notes, the loss of sensitivity can partly be overcome by increased exposure times.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Achieving extremely high angular resolution would be beneficial for many astronomical applications, Kellerer says. As one example, she points to recent research by her group that led to the discovery of Earth-like planets around an ultra-cool dwarf star located 39 light years away. \u201cEven though these planets are close by astronomical standards,\u201d she says, \u201cit will be extremely difficult to build telescopes that are sufficiently large, or interferometers that have a sufficiently long baseline, to image their surfaces. This will require a technological breakthrough.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Technique Could Improve Angular Resolution of Telescopes Beyond the Diffraction Limit The angular resolution of any optical imaging system, from cameras and microscopes to telescopes, is fundamentally constrained by diffraction, the bending of light waves around obstacles in their path The angular resolution of a telescope is the smallest angle between two objects that… Continue Reading Telescopes Beyond the Diffraction Limit<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTelescopes Beyond the Diffraction Limit - \u05d4\u05d8\u05db\u05e0\u05d9\u05d5\u05df-\u05de\u05db\u05d5\u05df \u05d8\u05db\u05e0\u05d5\u05dc\u05d5\u05d2\u05d9 \u05dc\u05d9\u05e9\u05e8\u05d0\u05dc<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.technion.ac.il\/en\/blog\/telescopes-beyond-the-diffraction-limit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Telescopes Beyond the Diffraction Limit - 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