SCINTILLATION IN OPTICAL STELLAR INTERFEROMETRY

The signal measured by a stellar interferometer consists of a coherent part that contains information about the fringe visibility and an inc oherent part that is usually removed at an early stage of the data pro cessing. If this separation is not done, the scintillation noise assoc iated with the incoherent term can systematically bias the measurement of fringe visibility, and it is important to take this into considera tion when designing detection systems for stellar interferometry. On t he other hand, the scintillation noise can provide additional informat ion about atmospheric turbulence. This may prove to be useful in the r eduction of data obtained interferometrically.