Towards an Extended VLTI: Turbulence Characterization for Kilometer-Scale Optical Links at Paranal

Abstract

Future extensions of the VLTI aim to push infrared interferometry toward kilometer scale baselines, enabling angular resolutions of a few tens of micro-arcseconds. A first step would couple a new telescope on the VISTA platform to the existing VLTI infrastructure, creating a 1.4 km baseline at Paranal. Among the possible beam-transport solutions, direct free-space transmission with adaptive-optics (AO) pre-compensation, inspired by Free-Space Optical (FSO) communications, offers an attractive combination of spectral flexibility, moderate cost, and preservation of field information. We present a preliminary AO dimensioning study, including fitting error, photon noise, anisoplanatism, and scintillation, showing that moderate-order correction (around 10x10 actuators) may be sufficient, but that performance depends critically on the poorly known turbulence distribution along the horizontal path. We therefore propose a dedicated turbulence-monitoring experiment across the VISTA-VLTI line of sight, using two 30-50 cm telescopes equipped with calibrated light sources. The experiment combines a wide-field Shack-Hartmann sensor for tomographic reconstruction of the turbulence volume with an event-based (neuromorphic) camera capable of capturing fast, anisotropic turbulence at microsecond timescales. The resulting dataset will provide the first systematic characterization of kilometer-scale horizontal turbulence at Paranal, paving the way toward an extended kilometer-baseline VLTI.