SETI & Technosignatures

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

By Keith Cowing
Press Release
astro-ph.IM
February 15, 2019
Filed under
A Proposed Method for a Photon-Counting Laser Coherence Detection System to Complement Optical SETI
Green Bank Observatory
Green Bank

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 photon sensitive detectors and a modulating asymmetric interferometer has been modelled. The results suggest that the sensitivity of detection for continuous laser sources would be better than current spectroscopic approaches, with detection thresholds of order 10-20 photons/s against a background with a spectral bandwidth of 0.1nm over an observation time of 750s.

David M. Benton
(Submitted on 14 Feb 2019)

Comments: 13 pages, 5 figures
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
Cite as: arXiv:1902.05371 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:1902.05371v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
Submission history
From: David Benton Dr
[v1] Thu, 14 Feb 2019 14:27:30 UTC (207 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05371

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