New hybrid reconstruction techniques for first analyses of ultra-high energy gamma-ray data from the hybrid TAIGA detector
Final Report Abstract
Gamma-ray astronomy addresses the physics of the most energetic events in the universe. Observations of gamma-rays from astrophysical objects helps understanding their intrinsic processes. At gamma-ray energies in the TeV (10^12 eV) to PeV (10^15 eV) range, a low event rate requires very large instrumented detector areas, only achievable with ground-based experiments. The scalability of very large experiments is limited by the number of readout channels required per km2 . For a typical small size imaging air Cherenkov telescope (IACT), of the order of 1000 channels per IACT are needed. Increasing the distance between IACTs would help minimizing costs per square-km. The aim of the TAIGA collaboration is to establish a new hybrid reconstruction technique, with the help of which the distance between two telescopes can be increased up to 1000 m, thus maximizing the detector area for a given number of IACTs. Using such large separations between the IACTs, a stereoscopic reconstruction is no longer possible. A single IACT does not provide the same reconstruction quality as a stereoscopic system. However, a single IACT combined with precise incident angle and core position information from, e.g., a timing array can achieve a comparable reconstruction quality. The concept of TAIGA consists of widely spaced IACTs combined with a large area timing array (HiSCORE). The timing array provides good angular, energy, and core resolutions at high energies. The core position reconstructed by HiSCORE is used for image scaling of the IACT images, resulting in comparable gamma-hadron separation power as the classical stereoscopic approach. The aim of this project is to establish all necessary components / steps in order to implement a hybrid imaging-timing reconstruction of TAIGA data, therewith delivering a proof-of-principle of the hybrid concept. A detailed description of TAIGA can be found in our publications.
Publications
-
Status and First Results of TAIGA. Physics of Atomic Nuclei 84 (2021) 1045
Tluczykont, M., Astapov, I. I., Awad, A. K., Bezyazeekov, P. A. & Blank, M.
-
Development of hybrid reconstruction techniques for TAIGA, 37th International Cosmic Ray Conference. 12-23 July 2021
Blank, M. Tluczykont, M., Awad, A. et al.
-
Detection of the Crab Nebula using a randomforest analysis of the first TAIGA IACT data. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 529(4), 3495-3502.
Blank, M.; Tluczykont, M.; Porelli, A.; Mirzoyan, R.; Wischnewski, R.; Awad, A. K. & Brückner, M.
-
Future Developments in Ground-Based Gamma-Ray Astronomy. Handbook of X-ray and Gamma-ray Astrophysics, 1-60. Springer Nature Singapore.
Almeida, Ulisses Barres de & Tluczykont, Martin
