One-element interferometer

Abstract

We apply the phase-switching method of Ryle to convert single dish radio telescopes to one-element interferometers and thereby accord them the benefit of correlation measurements, viz. to measure only the flux from the celestial sources avoiding contributions from the receiver and the atmosphere. This application has many uses: (a) enables single dishes to image the sky efficiently without the need to scan, measuring all sources, point, extended, spectral and continuum, with both bolometric and coherent receivers; (b) enables adding reliable short-spacing data to existing interferometers such as Atacama Large Millimetre-wave Array,, mitigating calibration issues; (c) enables ground-based NIR/MIR imaging to accurately remove atmospheric contributions; (d) can be adapted to provide an alternate surface measurement method for telescopes.