A Proposed Method for a Photon-counting Laser Coherence Detection System to Complement Optical SETI

David Benton

doi:10.1088/1538-3873/ab1a46.

A Proposed Method for a Photon-counting Laser Coherence Detection System to Complement Optical SETI

David Benton

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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 photonsensitive detectors and a modulating asymmetric interferometer has been modeled. 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 s−1 m−2 against a background with a spectral bandwidth of 0.1 nm over an observation time of 750 s.

Original language	English
Article number	074501
Number of pages	13
Journal	Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
Volume	131
Issue number	1001
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1088/1538-3873/ab1a46.
Publication status	Published - 22 May 2019

Bibliographical note

Keywords

Coherence
Photon counting
Seti

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10.1088/1538-3873/ab1a46.

1902.05371
© 2019 The Author
Submitted manuscript, 929 KB

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.05371.pdf

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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 photonsensitive detectors and a modulating asymmetric interferometer has been modeled. 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 s−1 m−2 against a background with a spectral bandwidth of 0.1 nm over an observation time of 750 s.",

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A Proposed Method for a Photon-counting Laser Coherence Detection System to Complement Optical SETI

Abstract

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