Stellar intensity interferometry in the photon-counting regime

Stellar intensity interferometry consists in measuring the correlation of the light intensity fluctuations at two telescopes observing the same star. The amplitude of the correlation is directly related to the luminosity distribution of the star, which would be unresolved by a single telescope. This technique is based on the well-known Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect. After its discovery in the 1950s, it was used in astronomy until the 1970s, and then replaced by direct (“amplitude”) interferometry, which is much more sensitive, but also much more demanding. However, in recent years, intensity interferometry has undergone a revival. In this article, we present a summary of the state of the art, and we discuss in detail the signal-to-noise ratio of intensity interferometry in the framework of photon-counting detection.