Kilometer-baseline interferometry: science drivers for the next generation instrument
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics2024-10-30v1Cosmology and Nongalactic AstrophysicsEarth and Planetary AstrophysicsSolar and Stellar Astrophysics
Infrared interferometry has seen a revolution over the last few years. The advent of GRAVITY+ is about to enable high-contrast observations, all-sky coverage and faint science up to K=21, with the implementation on 8m-class telescope of extreme adaptive optics, wide-field observations, and soon laser guide stars, following a long-term vision of technological and infrastructure development at VLTI. This major progress in sensitivity lift a fundamental limitation of infrared interferometry, namely the brightness temperature achievable with this technique down to milli-arcsecond resolution imaging. This change of paradigm is a crucial element for the expansion of current arrays to a facility up to one to ten kilometer baselines. Micro-arcsecond scales imaging in the infrared on thermal objects, reaching the highest angular resolution possible even compared to VLBI, could offer a unique window in observational astronomy for the next generation instrument.
@article{arxiv.2410.22063,
title = {Kilometer-baseline interferometry: science drivers for the next generation instrument},
author = {G. Bourdarot and F. Eisenhauer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.22063},
year = {2024}
}