Application of bispectrum analysis for phase recovery from one-dimensional infrared speckle data

We apply bispectrum analysis to one-dimensional astronomical infrared specklegrams and compare the recovered phases and their variances with those obtained by the Knox–Thompson algorithm. A number of averaging techniques are used to combine the multiple object phase estimates from the average bispectrum phases. Analysis of these techniques indicates that only a fraction of the nonredundant support of the bispectrum is necessary for the object phase retrieval. We have calibrated our bispectra for zero-mean additive detector noise. Results are presented for a bright point source and the nearby binary star Ross 614AB along with its point-source comparison. The point-source results indicate a phase structure that may be due to telescope aberrations that do not average out in the bispectrum process. The point-source-calibrated phases obtained for Ross 614AB from the bispectrum analysis show the binary structure out to higher spatial frequencies than do the Knox–Thompson results.