Welcome to the new version of CaltechAUTHORS. Login is currently restricted to library staff. If you notice any issues, please email coda@library.caltech.edu
Published September 1989 | Published
Journal Article Open

Self-noise in interferometers - Radio and infrared

Abstract

A complete theory of noise in a synthesis image is proposed for a source of arbitrary strength. In the limit of faint sources, the standard estimates of noise in a synthesis image are recovered, while in the limit of strong sources, the noise in the synthesis image is found to be dominated by either self noise or by the noise generated by the source signal itself. It is found that the best VLBI maps (with noise approaching the thermal noise) may in fact be limited by self noise, and that there is a negligible bias in the standard definitions of the bispectrum phasor and the closure phase. The results suggest that at the low signal levels which are characteristic of infrared interferometers, it is best to fit the model to all the closure phases and fringe amplitudes.

Additional Information

© 1989 American Astronomical Society. Provided by the NASA Astrophysics Data System. Received 26 January 1989; revised 11 April 1989. I am most grateful to the W. M. Keck foundation for a grant under which all of the work reported here was performed. I thank A. C. S. Readhead for early discussions which led to this work, and S. Myers for a careful reading of the manuscript and for pointing out a fundamental flaw with the previous version of the paper. Discussions with D. Jones, T. Nakajima, and T. Pearson were very useful and resulted in improvement of the paper. I thank them for this.

Attached Files

Published - Kulkarni_1989p1112.pdf

Files

Kulkarni_1989p1112.pdf
Files (2.7 MB)
Name Size Download all
md5:354bbead68fac4a6fe96c07041f36910
2.7 MB Preview Download

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023