The Cherenkov Telescope array on-site integral sensitivity: observing the Crab

With very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray astronomy becoming a mature branch of observational astrophysics, and the multi-messenger sky being opened up by neutrino observatories and gravitational wave detectors, we here propose to set up a ring of imaging air Cherenkov telescopes – the Cherenkov Telescope Ring (CTR). The aim of this proposed project would be to facilitate continuous monitoring of sources on the VHE- and multi-messenger sky with minimal time delays and with high sensitivity. Development time and construction cost could be kept comparatively low by both including existing facilities into the monitoring effort, and by relying on substantial previous expertise gained in the community on the road towards the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). This way, the Ring could prove to be a highly efficient facility greatly enhancing the science prospects for future ground-based high-energy astrophysics.

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) observatory will probe the non-thermal universe above 20 GeV up to several hundreds of TeV with a significant improvement in sensitivity and angular resolution compared to current experiments. Its outstanding capabilities will allow to increase the number of extragalactic cosmic accelerators detected at very high energy (VHE) and therefore to better constrain the population of VHE accelerators and the gamma-ray absorption processes in the intergalactic medium. For the first time in the history of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs), CTA will be an open observatory and high-level data will be made available to the astronomical community. Gammapy is an open-source Python package developed by the Cherenkov telescope community that provides tools to simulate the gamma-ray sky and analyse IACT data. The versatile architecture of, and steady user contributions to Gammapy enable a large variety of high-level data analyses. Examples of Gaammapy applications are presented, particularly in the context of extragalactic science with CTA.

In this thesis a detailed study of the interaction between gamma-rays coming from active galactic nuclei (AGN) and the radiation eld generated by the thermal emission from all the galaxies, the extragalactic background light (EBL), is performed. The development of the imaging air Cherenkov telescope (IACT) technique has been providing well determined spectral energy distributions (SED) of extragalactic sources and, in turn, allowing investigations of the attenuation processes of very high energy (VHE) radiation by the EBL. In 1997, a are state of the blazar Markarian 501 (Mkn 501) provided ux measurements at energies up to 20 TeV. We show that this spectrum is the one with the highest expected attenuation by the EBL dust component among the current known TeV emitters. Starting from an EBL model based on stellar and dust blackbody contributions, we were able to investigate the role of each EBL component in the attenuation of Mkn 501 SED. In such EBL model, dust is divided into three dierent grain types (polycyclic aromatic hydrocabons (PAH), small (SG) and large grains (LG)) and the importance of each one of these components to the opacity of the extragalactic medium for the Mkn 501 SED could be better understood. In particular, PAH molecules have a fundamental importance in the description of Mkn 501 spectrum, because its slope observed around 10 TeV can only be correctly described by this dust component. On the other hand, an eective model containing only PAH as dust can be excluded with a signicance of at least 5, independently of the intrinsic spectrum assumed. Finally, a forecasting study is performed for the third generation of IACT, the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). Through a maximum likelihood estimator we show that, already for a single source analysis, the PAH relative contribution can be determined with a good resolution for 50 hours of observation. The combination of several observations shows that 30 minutes of exposure time is enough to determine the PAH fraction with a reasonable resolution. The impact of the redshift uncertainties is also analyzed considering an a priori probability for this observable when determining the PAH fraction.

The ctools open-source software package was developed for the scientific analysis of astronomical data from Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs), such as H.E.S.S., VERITAS, MAGIC, and the future Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). To date, the software has been mainly tested using simulated CTA data; however, upon the public release of a small set of H.E.S.S. observations of the Crab nebula, MSH 15–52, RX J1713.7–3946, and PKS 2155–304 validation using real data is now possible. We analysed the data of the H.E.S.S. public data release using ctools version 1.6 and compared our results to those published by the H.E.S.S. Collaboration for the respective sources. We developed a parametric background model that satisfactorily describes the expected background rate as a function of reconstructed energy and direction for each observation. We used that model, and tested all analysis methods that are supported by ctools, including novel unbinned and joint or stacked binned analyses of the measured event energies and reconstructed directions, and classical On-Off analysis methods that are comparable to those used by the H.E.S.S. Collaboration. For all analysis methods, we found a good agreement between the ctools results and the H.E.S.S. Collaboration publications considering that they are not always directly comparable due to differences in the datatsets and event processing software. We also performed a joint analysis of H.E.S.S. and Fermi-LAT data of the Crab nebula, illustrating the multi-wavelength capacity of ctools. The joint Crab nebula spectrum is compatible with published literature values within the systematic uncertainties. We conclude that the ctools software is mature for the analysis of data from existing IACTs, as well as from the upcoming CTA.

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) project aims to create a next generation Very High Energy (VHE)γ-ray telescope array, devoted to the observation in a wide band of energy, from a few tens of GeV to more than 100 TeV. Two sites are foreseen to view the whole sky, with the main one in the Southern Hemisphere where about 100 telescopes of three different classes, related to the specific energy region to be investigated, will be installed. Among these, the Small Size class of Telescopes, SSTs, are 4-meter telescopes and are devoted to the highest energy region, from 1 TeV to beyond 100 TeV. Some of these sites considered for CTA exhibit strong seismic constraints. At the Observatoire de Paris, we have designed a prototype of a Small Size Telescope named SST-GATE, based on the dual-mirror Schwarzschild-Couder optical formula, which was never before implemented in the design of a Cherenkov telescope. The integration of this telescope on the site of the Observatoire de Paris is currently in progress. Technical solutions exist in the literature to protect structures from dynamic loads caused by earthquakes without increasing the mass and cost of the structure. This paper presents a state of the art of these techniques by keeping in mind that the operational performance of the telescope should not be compromised. The preliminary seismic analysis of SSTGATE performed by the finite element method is described before.

The Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Technique (IACT) is unusual in astronomy as the atmosphere actually forms an intrinsic part of the detector system, with telescopes indirectly detecting very high energy particles by the generation and transport of Cherenkov photons deep within the atmosphere. This means that accurate measurement, characterisation and monitoring of the atmosphere is at the very heart of successfully operating an IACT system. The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be the next generation IACT observatory with an ambitious aim to improve the sensitivity of an order of magnitude over current facilities, along with corresponding improvements in angular and energy resolution and extended energy coverage, through an array of Large (23 m), Medium (12 m) and Small (4 m) sized telescopes spread over an area of order ^km2. Whole sky coverage will be achieved by operating at two sites: one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern hemisphere. This proceedings will cover the characterisation of the candidate sites and the atmospheric calibration strategy. CTA will utilise a suite of instrumentation and analysis techniques for atmospheric modelling and monitoring regarding pointing forecasts, intelligent pointing selection for the observatory operations and for offline data correction.

Stereoscopic arrays of Imaging Cherenkov Telescopes allow to reconstruct gamma‐ray‐induced showers in 3 dimensions. An analysis method based on a simple 3D‐model of electromagnetic showers and implemented in the framework of the H.E.S.S. experiment was recently improved by an additional quality criterion which reduces the background contamination by a factor of about 2 in the case of extended sources, while hardly affecting gamma‐ray selection efficiency. Moreover, the dramatic flares of PKS 2155‐304 in July 2006, which provided H.E.S.S. data with an almost pure gamma‐ray sample, offered the unique opportunity of a precision test of the 3D‐reconstruction method as well as of the H.E.S.S. simulations used in its calibration. An agreement at a few percent level is found between data and simulations for the distributions of all 3D shower parameters.

The field of Very High Energy (VHE) gamma ray astronomy using the Atmospheric Cerenkov Technique has entered an interesting phase with detection of various galactic and extragalactic sources. Among galactic sources, only the Crab nebula has been established as a standard candle. Most observations on pulsars are in agreement as to the necessity for the GeV spectra to steepen at 1.5 TeV which could be the second component of the Outer Gap pulsar models.

The intermediate-frequency peaked BL Lacertae (IBL) object 3C 66A is detected during 2007 - 2008 in VHE (very high energy: E > 100 GeV) gamma-rays with the VERITAS stereoscopic array of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. An excess of 1791 events is detected, corresponding to a significance of 21.2 standard deviations (sigma), in these observations (32.8 hours live time). The observed integral flux above 200 GeV is 6% of the Crab Nebula's flux and shows evidence for variability on the time-scale of days. The measured energy spectrum is characterized by a soft power law with photon index Gamma = 4.1 +- 0.4_stat +- 0.6_sys. The radio galaxy 3C 66B is excluded as a possible source of the VHE emission.

We provide an updated assessment of the power of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) to search for thermally produced dark matter at the TeV scale, via the associated gamma-ray signal from pair-annihilating dark matter particles in the region around the Galactic centre. We find that CTA will open a new window of discovery potential, significantly extending the range of robustly testable models given a standard cuspy profile of the dark matter density distribution. Importantly, even for a cored profile, the projected sensitivity of CTA will be sufficient to probe various well-motivated models of thermally produced dark matter at the TeV scale. This is due to CTA's unprecedented sensitivity, angular and energy resolutions, and the planned observational strategy. The survey of the inner Galaxy will cover a much larger region than corresponding previous observational campaigns with imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. CTA will map with unprecedented precision the large-scale diffuse emission in high-energy gamma rays, constituting a background for dark matter searches for which we adopt state-of-the-art models based on current data. Throughout our analysis, we use up-to-date event reconstruction Monte Carlo tools developed by the CTA consortium, and pay special attention to quantifying the level of instrumental systematic uncertainties, as well as background template systematic errors, required to probe thermally produced dark matter at these energies.

ASTRI is a flagship project of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, which aims to develop an endto- end prototype of one of the three types of telescopes to be part of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), an observatory which will be the main representative of the next generation of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes. The ASTRI project, led by the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF), has proposed an original design for the Small Size Telescope, which is aimed to explore the uppermost end of the Very High Energy domain up to about few hundreds of TeV with unprecedented sensitivity, angular resolution and imaging quality. It is characterized by challenging and innovative technological solutions which will be adopted for the first time in a Cherenkov telescope: a dual-mirror Schwarzschild-Couder configuration, a modular, light and compact camera based on silicon photomultipliers, and a front-end electronic based on a specifically designed ASIC. The end-to-end project is also including all the data-analysis software and the data archive. In this paper we describe the process followed to derive the ASTRI specifications from the CTA general requirements, a process which had to take into proper account the impact on the telescope design of the different types of the CTA requirements (performance, environment, reliability-availability-maintenance, etc.). We also describe the strategy adopted to perform the specification verification, which will be based on different methods (inspection, analysis, certification, and test) in order to demonstrate the telescope compliance with the CTA requirements. Finally we describe the integration planning of the prototype assemblies (structure, mirrors, camera, control software, auxiliary items) and the test planning of the end-to-end telescope. The approach followed by the ASTRI project is to have all the information needed to report the verification process along all project stages in a single layer. From this unique layer it is possible to, in a semi-automatic way, generate updated project documentation and progress report.

Throughout this thesis, the spectral and temporal long-term behavior of the Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) 1ES1959+650 is studied. Being a blazar, i.e. an AGN with a highly relativistic plasma outflow pointing towards the Earth, and having shown strong hints of hadronic emission processes in the past, 1ES1959+650 is a primary candidate for a source of cosmic rays. The origin of these ultra high energetic charged particles is the central question of astroparticle physics. Therefore, 1ES1959+650 has been monitored with the MAGIC telescope since 2004, measuring very high energy (VHE) gamma-rays. The resulting time-integrated energy spectrum reported here is by far the most exact one determined for this source up to now. Also the temporal variability for different wavelength bands, which should be connected in the case of most non-hadronic emission processes, is examined in this thesis. While strong variations occur in the optical and X-rays, the VHE gamma-ray emission is compatible with a constant flux. Furthermore, the time-integrated spectral energy distribution is compiled from radio to VHE gamma-rays and modeled for hadronic and leptonic emission scenarios to unveil the character of the emitting particles. Unexpected results are obtained on the spectral shape of the observed blazar, especially in high energy gamma-rays. By this, 1ES1959+650 is one of the very first high frequency peaked blazars whose non-thermal emission cannot be explained with a single-zone SSC model.Additionally, in this thesis the idea of long-term monitoring of blazars at VHE gamma-rays is pursued further. The FACT telescope, the first application of G-APDs as photosensors in an imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope, has recently been constructed and already during its commissioning phase reported on very promising first results. After the commissioning, it will be devoted to monitoring observations of bright blazars. For the construction of this telescope, the completely reworked aluminum mirrors have been characterized, including measurements of the focal lengths and the spot sizes of a reflected point-like light source.Finally, it is presented that DWARF, a global network of a small number of Cherenkov telescopes dedicated to monitoring observations of TeV-bright blazars, will be well suited to obtain comprehensive, well sampled lightcurves which are needed to study possible temporal correlations between VHE gamma-rays and other wavelengths.

Night Sky Background (NSB) is a complex phenomenon, consisting of all light detected by Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) not attributable to Cherenkov light emission. Understanding the effect of NSB on cameras for the next-generation Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is important, as it affects the systematic errors on observations, the energy threshold, the thermal control of the cameras and the ability of the telescopes to operate under partial moonlight conditions. This capacity to observe under partial moonlight conditions is crucial for the CTA transient science programme, as it substantially increases the potential observing time. Using tools initially developed for H.E.S.S. (in combination with the prototype CTA analysis package ctapipe) we will present predictions for the NSB present in images taken by the CTA Small Sized Telescope Camera (SSTCAM), showing that SSTCAM will likely be able to meet the associated CTA requirements. Additionally, we calculate the potential observing time gain by operating under high NSB conditions.

Riccardo Rando∗ab, Daniele Cortia, Francesco Dazzic, Alessandro De Angelisd, Antonios Dettlaffc, Daniela Dornere, David Finkc, Nadia Fouque f , Felix Grundnerc, Werner Habererc, Alexander Hahnc, Richard Hermel f , Samo Korparg, Gasper Kukec Mezekh, Ronald Maierc, Christian Maneaa, Mose Mariottiab, Daniel Mazinci, Fatima Mehrez f , Razmik Mirzoyanc, Sergey Podkladkinc, Ignasi Reichardta, Wolfgang Rhode j, Sylvie Rosier f , Cornelia Schultzab, Carlo Stellak, Masahiro Teshimaci, Holger Wetteskindc and Marko Zavrtanikgh for the CTA Consortium† E-mail: riccardo.rando@pd.infn.it a INFN Section of Padova, Italy; b University of Padova, Italy; c Max Planck Institute for Physics, Munich, Germany; d LIP/IST Lisboa, Portugal; e University of Wurzburg, Germany; f LAPP, CNRS-IN2P3, Annecy, France; g Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia; h University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia; i University of Tokyo and ICRR, Tokyo, Japan; j Technische Universitat, Dortmund, Germany; k University of Udine and INFN, Italy. The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the the next generation facility of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes; two sites will cover both hemispheres. CTA will reach unprecedented sensitivity, energy and angular resolution in very-high-energy gamma-ray astronomy. Each CTA array will include four Large Size Telescopes (LSTs), designed to cover the low-energy range of the CTA sensitivity (∼20 GeV to 200 GeV). In the baseline LST design, the focal-plane camera will be instrumented with 265 photodetector clusters; each will include seven photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), with an entrance window of 1.5 inches in diameter. The PMT design is based on mature and reliable technology. Recently, silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are emerging as a competitor. Currently, SiPMs have advantages (e.g. lower operating voltage and tolerance to high illumination levels) and disadvantages (e.g. higher capacitance and cross talk rates), but this technology is still young and rapidly evolving. SiPM technology has a strong potential to become superior to the PMT one in terms of photon detection efficiency and price per square mm of detector area. While the advantage of SiPMs has been proven for high-density, small size cameras, it is yet to be demonstrated for large area cameras such as the one of the LST. We are working to develop a SiPM-based module for the LST camera, in view of a possible camera upgrade. We will describe the solutions we are exploring in order to balance a competitive performance with a minimal impact on the overall LST camera design. The 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference, 30 July6 August, 2015 The Hague, The Netherlands

The High Energy Stereoscopic system, H.E.S.S. is an array of four imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes, designed for the study of non-thermal phenomena in the universe at very high energies (VHE). The sensitivity of telescope systems such as H.E.S.S. can considerably be improved by a better discrimination of the vast number of hadronic cosmic-ray background events against the very rare gamma-ray signal events. In this work, an elaborated discrimination technique – the Boosted Decision Tree method – has been developed and its capabilities in terms of gamma/hadron separation and improved sensitivity are demonstrated. In the second part, the BDT method is applied to data obtained in observations of massive star forming environments, namely the colliding wind binary η Carinae, the massive stellar cluster Westerlund 1 and the Starburst galaxy NGC 253. An upper limit on the gamma-ray flux of the famous colliding wind binary system η Carinae is derived and, for the first time, an alternative model for the high-energy emission observed by the Fermi satellite is presented. The detection of very extended VHE gamma-ray emission from the vicinity of Westerlund 1 is reported and thorough spectral and morphological tests are presented. Large parts of the resolved emission can be explained in a hadronic scenario, however, a decisive conclusion can not be drawn. Finally, the BDT method allowed to detect the first Starburst galaxy, namely NGC253, in VHE gamma rays. Spectral and morphological results are presented and suggest that large parts of the CR energy content are convectively and diffusively transported into the intergalactic medium.