"Macroscopic fluctuations" of light beams as a novel tool for astrophysical studies

The presented work expands on that published in Astrophysics and Space Science a decade ago. In the previous publication we described a wonderful phenomenon-synchronous change of the shape of the histograms obtained from measurements of dark current fluctuations in the two photomultipliers located more than two thousand kilometers apart from each other. This work was a part of our persistent continuous studies showing the regularities in changes shape of histograms, i.e. spectra of amplitude fluctuations of the rates of different processes, constructed for relatively short section of the experimental time series. These regularities are similar for the processes of completely different nature: biochemical reactions, radioactive decay (both alpha and beta), Brownian motion, or noise in the electronic devices. The regularities manifest themselves in the periodicity of changes of the shape of histograms. Phenomenon of regular changes in histogram shapes was termed "macroscopic fluctuations" (MF). We have shown that MF are determined by diurnal rotation of the Earth, its movement around the Sun, as well as by mutual disposition of the Earth, the Moon and the Sun. Recently we have observed the similar effects in the experiments with the fluctuations of light beams generated by light-emitting diodes and lasers. These new results are described in our manuscript. The discovery of MF anisotropy called for substantial improvement of the measurement techniques to study spatial anisotropy. The collimators used in the measurements of alpha-radioactivity have a spatial resolution limit of a few degrees (the range of alpha-particle in the air is several centimeters, with the diameter of the collimator channel 1 mm). The application of light beams allows to improve spatial resolution to tenths of second of arc. With such a resolution, devices for measurements of light-beam fluctuations can become an important tool in the astrophysical studies of the MF phenomenon. The device for such measurements is compact, and tremendously cheaper than complicated, giant and "astronomically" expensive international currently used constructions.