Recent dynamical studies indicate that the possibility of an Earth-like planet around αCen A or B should be taken seriously. Such a planet, if it exists, would perturb the orbital astrometry by <10μas, which is 10−6 of the separation between the two stars. We assess the feasibility of detecting such perturbations using ground-based intensity interferometry. We simulate a dedicated setup consisting of four 40-cm telescopes equipped with photon counters and correlators with time resolution 0.1ns, and a sort of matched filter implemented through an aperture mask. The astrometric error from one night of observing αCen AB is ≈0.5mas. The error decreases if longer observing times and multiple spectral channels are used, as (channels×nights)−1/2.
@article{arxiv.2205.06517,
title = {Simulations of astrometric planet detection in Alpha Centauri by intensity interferometry},
author = {Km Nitu Rai and Subrata Sarangi and Prasenjit Saha and Soumen Basak},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.06517},
year = {2022}
}