A Proposed Method for a Photon-Counting Laser Coherence Detection System to Complement Optical SETI
Abstract
The detection of laser radiation originating from space is a positive indicator of Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (ETI). Thus far the optical search for ETI (OSETI) has looked for enhanced brightness in the form of either narrow-band spectral emission or time correlated photons from laser pulses. In this paper it is proposed to look for coherence properties of incoming light in a manner that can distinguish against atomic emission lines. The use of photon sensitive detectors and a modulating asymmetric interferometer has been modelled. The results suggest that the sensitivity of detection for continuous laser sources would be better than current spectroscopic approaches, with detection thresholds of 1 photon sm against a background with a spectral bandwidth of 0.1nm over an observation time of 750s.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1902.05371,
title = {A Proposed Method for a Photon-Counting Laser Coherence Detection System to Complement Optical SETI},
author = {David M. Benton},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1902.05371},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
17 pages, 7 figures