A high performance likelihood reconstruction of γ-rays for imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes

By M. Naurois, L. Rolland. 2009

268 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract We present a sophisticated γ -ray likelihood reconstruction technique for imaging atmospheric Cerenkov telescopes. The technique is based on the comparison of the raw Cherenkov camera pixel images of a photon induced atmospheric particle shower with the predictions from a semi-analytical model. The approach was initiated by the CAT experiment in the 1990s, and has been further developed by a new fit algorithm based on a log-likelihood minimisation using all pixels in the camera, a precise treatment of night sky background noise, the use of stereoscopy and the introduction of first interaction depth as parameter of the model. The reconstruction technique provides a more precise direction and energy reconstruction of the photon induced shower compared to other techniques in use, together with a better gamma efficiency, especially at low energies, as well as an improved background rejection. For data taken with the H.E.S.S. experiment, the reconstruction technique yielded a factor of ∼2 better sensitivity compared to the H.E.S.S. standard reconstruction techniques based on second moments of the camera images (Hillas parameter technique).

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/64183144d05fa4c00e7be81fd67c7406932c1df3

How researchers see this paper

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Martina Raue
2. J. Biteau
3. D. Horns
4. R. Parsons
5. J. Hinton
6. J. Hinton
7. W. Hofmann
8. G. Dubus

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. J. Biteau
2. Martina Raue
3. D. Horns
4. R. Parsons
5. J. Hinton
6. J. Hinton
7. W. Hofmann
8. Catherine Boisson

Citations in the corpus

• Measurement of the extragalactic background light imprint on the spectra of the brightest blazars observed with H.E.S.S. (2012, methodology): “The lowest photo-electron threshold of 40 p.e. per camera image after cleaning (Loose Cuts, de Naurois & Rolland 2009) was adopted to cover the largest possible energy range.”
• A Monte Carlo template based analysis for air-Cherenkov arrays (2014, methodology): “Figure 10: Comparison of key performance results from the ImPACT event reconstruction with the model reconstruction (data points reproduced from [6]).”