The information content of optical intensity interferometry
Abstract
Optical intensity interferometry (II) can in principle resolve structure on angular scales θ∼ λ/B, but it measures only the squared visibility |cal V|2, discarding Fourier phase. We quantify what information can actually be recovered from phase-less |cal V|2 measurements as a function of the aggregate signal-to-noise ratio and array configuration, using score-based diffusion models as non-parametric image priors. We construct an image reconstruction pipeline, and validate it by reconstructing a variety of images, including GRMHD simulations of black hole accretion disks and actual SDO/HMI continuum images of the Sun, from phase-less Fourier amplitudes. Using simulated data, we map the reconstruction fidelity of Sun-like stellar surfaces as a function of noise level, number of (u,v) samples, and maximum baseline Bmax, for surface maps spanning a range of activity levels. We find that fidelity depends on the data only through the total signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the surface features of interest, provided that the (u,v) plane is sampled sufficiently densely. These results show that the SNR levels achieved by next-generation intensity interferometers observing realistic sources are sufficient to image highly complicated stellar surfaces.
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BibTeX
@misc{dalal2026information,
title = {{The information content of optical intensity interferometry}},
author = {Neal Dalal and Biwei Dai and Matthew K. Browning},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.05602},
eprint = {2609.05602},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.05602},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - The information content of optical intensity interferometry
AU - Neal Dalal
AU - Biwei Dai
AU - Matthew K. Browning
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/04
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.05602
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.05602
AB - Optical intensity interferometry (II) can in principle resolve structure on angular scales θ∼ λ/B, but it measures only the squared visibility |cal V|^2, discarding Fourier phase. We quantify what information can actually be recovered from phase-less |cal V|^2 measurements as a function of the aggregate signal-to-noise ratio and array configuration, using score-based diffusion models as non-parametric image priors. We construct an image reconstruction pipeline, and validate it by reconstructing a variety of images, including GRMHD simulations of black hole accretion disks and actual SDO/HMI continuum images of the Sun, from phase-less Fourier amplitudes. Using simulated data, we map the reconstruction fidelity of Sun-like stellar surfaces as a function of noise level, number of (u,v) samples, and maximum baseline B_max, for surface maps spanning a range of activity levels. We find that fidelity depends on the data only through the total signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the surface features of interest, provided that the (u,v) plane is sampled sufficiently densely. These results show that the SNR levels achieved by next-generation intensity interferometers observing realistic sources are sufficient to image highly complicated stellar surfaces.
ER -