Performance study of a wide-angle camera for atmospheric Cerenkov telescopes

Conference item

With the next generation of Atmospheric Cerenkov Telescopes (ACT) well on their way, effort has being shifted now towards a further improvement of the capabilities of these instruments. These next generation experiments have improved up to an order of magnitude their sensitivity over their first generation Counterparts. and have extended the energy coverage down to about 50 GeV. However, it is not clear whether the same approach is optimal for energies above 1 TcV. and with clear evidence of high energy emission above this energy from several astrophysical sources, we believe that this energy range could be further exploited. Many of our physics goals, such as, limits on quantum gravity or spectral variability and features of the high energy emission from AGNs. would benefit from an increase of sensitivity in this direction. Here, we investigate a possible way of increasing the collection area of ACTs above 1 TeV by using a wide-field-of-view (similar to 10 degrees) camera. Both, the scientific motivation and preliminary Monte Carlo Studies of the performance of such a detector, are discussed and presented here.

Authors: de la Calle, I; Biller, S

• Publication status: Published
• Journal: High Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy
• Volume: 745
• Pages: 742-747
• Publication date: 2005-01-01
• Event title: 2nd International Symposium on High Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy
• DOI: 10.1063/1.1878494
• EISSN: 1551-7616
• ISSN: 0094-243X
• ISBN: 0735402299