A 3.9 km baseline intensity interferometry photon counting experiment

In the last years we have operated two very similar ultrafast photon counting photometers (Iqueye and Aqueye+) on different telescopes. The absolute time accuracy in time tagging the detected photon with these instruments is of the order of 500 ps for hours of observation, allowing us to obtain, for example, the most accurate ever light curve in visible light of the optical pulsars. Recently we adapted the two photometers for working together on two telescopes at Asiago (Italy), for realizing an Hanbury-Brown and Twiss Intensity Interferometry like experiment with two 3.9 km distant telescopes. In this paper we report about the status of the activity and on the very preliminary results of our first attempt to measure the photon intensity correlation.Comment: invited paper in "Quantum Communications and Quantum Imaging XIV", SPIE Proc. 9980 (16 pp

Incomplete oedipism and chronic suicidality in psychotic depression with paranoid delusions related to eyes

Self-enucleation or oedipism is a term used to describe self-inflicted enucleation. It is a rare form of self-mutilation, found mainly in acutely psychotic patients. We propose the term incomplete oedipism to describe patients who deliberately and severely mutilate their eyes without proper enucleation. We report the case of a 32-year-old male patient with a five-year history of psychotic depression accompanied by paranoid delusions centered around his belief that his neighbors criticized him and stared at him. A central feature of his clinical picture was an eye injury that the patient had caused by pouring molten lead into his right eye during a period of deep hopelessness and suicidality when the patient could not resolve his anhedonia and social isolation. Pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy dramatically improved his disorder

Compensation of Non Common Path Aberrations on a pyramid wavefront sensor with an Adaptive Lens.

Closed loop systems based on the Pyramid wavefront sensor (P-WFS) can reach very high sensitivity respect to other wavefront sensors. The sensitivity increases as the Point Spread Function (PSF) on the tip of the pyramid gets smaller. Therefore, it is very important that in closed loop systems operating with the P-WFS the Non common Path Aberrations (NCPA) between the scientific camera arm and the P-WFS arm are reduced as much as possible. This thesis aims to study the performances of the reduction of NCPA using a multi-actuator deformable lens. Starting from the analytic simulations of the sensitivity gain of the PWFS, mainly conducted by Ragazzoni, Verinuad and Viotto, I developed an AO system to show experimentally the magnitude gain due to the P-WFS with respect to a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor (SH-WFS) when the sensitivity of the P-WFS increases with the decreasing of the aberrations. In fact, the P-WFS has the intrinsic capability to increase the gain as the aberrations are reduced; differently the SH-WFS maintains a constant gain under the same conditions. The most remarkable consequence is an improvement of the magnitude limit of observable stars with closed loop adaptive optics system. This is the feature of the P-WFS, that has made it the most implemented wavefront sensor in astronomic field in the last decade. Moreover, the multi-actuator deformable lens, recently developed at CNRIFN of Padua, is a promising device already used, with great results, in microscopy and ophthalmic instruments field. This adaptive lens has the unique feature of correcting aberrations up to the 4th order such as a deformable mirror allowing the realization of very compact optical setup. In particular, I have used the deformable lens (DL) to correct the non common path aberrations in closed loop mode between a P-WFS and a SH-WFS. The results show that the multi-actuator adaptive lens can be used to reduce the NCPA very close to the diffraction limit and that the correction can be maintained over a medium term operation with good stability

A 3.9 km baseline intensity interferometry photon counting experiment

In the last years we have operated two very similar ultrafast photon counting photometers (Iqueye and Aqueye+) on different telescopes. The absolute time accuracy in time tagging the detected photon with these instruments is of the order of 500 ps for hours of observation, allowing us to obtain, for example, the most accurate ever light curve in visible light of the optical pulsars. Recently we adapted the two photometers for working together on two telescopes at Asiago (Italy), for realizing an Hanbury-Brown and Twiss Intensity Interferometry like experiment with two 3.9 km distant telescopes. In this paper we report about the status of the activity and on the very preliminary results of our first attempt to measure the photon intensity correlation

Intensity interferometry with Aqueye+ and Iqueye in Asiago

In the last years we have operated two very similar ultrafast photon counting photometers (Iqueye and Aqueye+) on different telescopes. The absolute time accuracy in time tagging the detected photon with these instruments is of the order of 500 ps for hours of observation, allowing us to obtain, for example, the most accurate ever light curve in visible light of the optical pulsars. Recently we adapted the two photometers for working together on two telescopes at Asiago (Italy), for realizing an Hanbury-Brown and Twiss Intensity Interferometry like experiment with two 3.9 km distant telescopes. In this paper we report about the status of the activity and on the very preliminary results of our first attempt to measure the photon intensity correlation