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Brigham Young University

Journal of Undergraduate Research

2016

Light source

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Determining The Size Of A Light Source Using The Hanbury Brown And Twiss Effect, Adam Kingsley, Dallin Durfee Feb 2016

Determining The Size Of A Light Source Using The Hanbury Brown And Twiss Effect, Adam Kingsley, Dallin Durfee

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In 1956, Hanbury Brown and Twiss (HBT) published a paper1 on a method of determining the angular size of a star by comparing the intensities gathered from two detectors. They used this effect by using two photomultiplier tubes and by increasing the distance between them, saw a drop in the correlation between the currents. Because the correlations are made by the interference at the detectors but only the intensity is measured, the effect is sometimes referred to as intensity interferometry.

The idea arose to use the HBT effect to teach undergraduates various principles of light in a lab setting. …