Lucky imaging and aperture synthesis with low-redundancy apertures.

Lucky imaging, used with some success in astronomical and even horizontal-path imaging, relies on fleeting conditions of the atmosphere that allow momentary improvements in image quality, at least in portions of an image. Aperture synthesis allows a larger aperture and, thus, a higher-resolution imaging system to be synthesized through the superposition of image spatial-frequency components gathered by cooperative combinations of smaller subapertures. A combination of lucky imaging and aperture synthesis strengthens both methods for obtaining improved images through the turbulent atmosphere. We realize the lucky imaging condition appropriate for aperture synthesis imaging for a pair of rectangular subapertures and demonstrate that this condition occurs when the signal energy associated with bandpass spatial-frequency components achieves its maximum value.