Quote:
Originally Posted by bgilbert
G'day Ray.
. As an radio amatuer and amateur radio astronomer, I felt that your comment about " RF design techniques" was a bit of a put down. But then I remembered that I spent 45 years in the communication industry (microHz to 300 TeraHz) and could confidently respond, although my physics is a bit pathetic, as you have already gathered. i'll give it a go though. One of the biggest breakthroughs in fibre optics, was frequency domain multiplexing. using heterodyne techniques from circa(1930) radios.
. The PSF in your telescope, that you just, "put up with", cos most astronomers don't understand it. A QM, would probably tell you it's the uncertainty principle kicking in, or some such "twaddle". If you asked an old RF bloke, he'd say, the're just sidelobes we can eliminate (almost) or control those. Opticians have tried "apodization" without much success.
. Then there is those spider vanes in newtonians, and the spikes they produce (some astronomers have learnt to luv em?). I don't think they like the crappy PSF that the central obstruction causes in newts and some new designs coming onto the scene. Whatever you do, don't ask a QM to help you, they are busy with inflation, many worlds, dark stuff, entanglement etc.
RF bloke,
Barry
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Genuinely no putdown intended Barry - RF engineering is a noble profession, as is the study of quantum physics.
Telescope PSF is a very well developed area of astronomy - why would you think otherwise? for eg
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1996PASP..108..699R and
http://www.eso.org/sci/meetings/2015...apping_PSF.pdf
Apparently it is possible (but difficult) to study light diffraction using quantum concepts and it is possible that there are some secondary effects that are not predicted by wave theory (although I have only skimmed this paper!).
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1011.3593.pdf
It is also possible to resolve well inside the Rayleigh limit using quantum/photon techniques eg
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.02200.pdf. Some of the published experimental results for the various types of quantum microscopy are astonishing eg
https://physicsworld.com/a/quantum-m...hydrogen-atom/. I doubt that quantum imaging concepts will appear in our hobby, since we are generally limited by the atmosphere (with larger amateur scopes) and the Rayleigh limit is not the problem. However, it would be interesting to see if any of the quantum imaging techniques could be applied to space telescopes in the future eg
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.02064.pdf.
we live in interesting times Barry. Cheers Ray