First measurements and upgrade plans of the MAGIC intensity interferometer

Cortina, Juan; Acciari, V. A.; Biland, A.; Colombo, E.; da Costa, C.; Delgado, C.; Díaz, C.; Fiori, M.; Fink, D.; Hassan, T.; Jiménez-Martínez, I.; Lyard, E.; Mariotti, M.; Martínez, G.; Mirzoyan, R.; Naletto, G.; Polo, M.; Produit, N.; Rodríguez, J. J.; Schweizer, T.; Walter, R.; Wunderlich, C. W.; Zampieri, L.
Bibliographical reference

Optical and Infrared Interferometry and Imaging VIII

Advertised on:
8
2022
Number of authors
23
IAC number of authors
2
Citations
1
Refereed citations
1
Description
The two MAGIC 17-m diameter Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes have been equipped to work also as an intensity interferometer with a deadtime-free, 4-channel, GPU-based, real-time correlator. Operating with baselines between ∼40 and 90 m the MAGIC interferometer is able to measure stellar diameters of 0.5 - 1 mas in the 400-440 nm wavelength range with a sensitivity roughly 10 times better than that achieved in the 1970's by the Narrabri Stellar Intensity Interferometer. Besides, active mirror control allows to split the primary mirrors into sub-mirrors. This allows to make simultaneous calibration measurements of the zero-baseline correlation or to simultaneously collect six baselines below 17 m with almost arbitrary orientation, corresponding to angular scales of ∼1-50 mas. We plan to perform test observations adding the nearby Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) LST-1 23 m diameter telescope by next year. All three telescope pairs will be correlated simultaneously. Adding LST-1 is expected to increase the sensitivity by at least 1 mag and significantly improve the u-v plane coverage. If successful, the proposed correlator setup is scalable enough to be implemented to the full CTA arrays.