A parameterisation of single and multiple muons in the deep water or ice

Atmospheric muons play an important role in underwater/ice neutrino detectors. In this paper, a parameterisation of the flux of single and multiple muon events, their lateral distribution and of their energy spectrum is presented. The kinematics parameters were modelled starting from a full Monte Carlo simulation of the interaction of primary cosmic rays with atmospheric nuclei; secondary muons reaching the sea level were propagated in the deep water. The parametric formulas are valid for a vertical depth of 1.5-5 km w.e. and up to 85 deg for the zenith angle, and can be used as input for a fast simulation of atmospheric muons in underwater/ice detectors.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figure

A parameterisation of single and multiple muons in the deep water or ice

A new parameterisation of atmospheric muons deep underwater (or ice) is presented. It takes into account the simultaneous arrival of muons in bundle giving the multiplicity of the events and the muon energy spectrum as a function of their lateral distribution in a shower.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, talk given at TAUP 2005, Zaragoza (Spain) (to appear in the proceedings of TAUP 2005

H.E.S.S. discovery of very-high-energy gamma-ray emission of PKS 1440-389

Blazars are the most abundant class of known extragalactic very-high-energy (VHE, E>100 GeV) gamma-ray sources. However, one of the biggest difficulties in investigating their VHE emission resides in their limited number, since less than 60 of them are known by now. In this contribution we report on H.E.S.S. observations of the BL Lac object PKS 1440-389. This source has been selected as target for H.E.S.S. based on its high-energy gamma-ray properties measured by Fermi-LAT. The extrapolation of this bright, hard-spectrum gamma-ray blazar into the VHE regime made a detection on a relatively short time scale very likely, despite its uncertain redshift. H.E.S.S. observations were carried out with the 4-telescope array from February to May 2012 and resulted in a clear detection of the source. Contemporaneous multi-wavelength data are used to construct the spectral energy distribution of PKS 1440-389 which can be described by a simple one-zone synchrotron-self Compton model.Comment: In Proceedings of the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2015), The Hague, The Netherland

The H.E.S.S. extragalactic sky

The H.E.S.S. Cherenkov telescope array, located on the southern hemisphere in Namibia, studies very high energy (VHE; E>100 GeV) gamma-ray emission from astrophysical objects. During its successful operations since 2002 more than 80 galactic and extra-galactic gamma-ray sources have been discovered. H.E.S.S. devotes over 400 hours of observation time per year to the observation of extra-galactic sources resulting in the discovery of several new sources, mostly AGNs, and in exciting physics results e.g. the discovery of very rapid variability during extreme flux outbursts of PKS 2155-304, stringent limits on the density of the extragalactic background light (EBL) in the near-infrared derived from the energy spectra of distant sources, or the discovery of short-term variability in the VHE emission from the radio galaxy M 87. With the recent launch of the Fermi satellite in 2008 new insights into the physics of AGNs at GeV energies emerged, leading to the discovery of several new extragalactic VHE sources. Multi-wavelength observations prove to be a powerful tool to investigate the production mechanism for VHE emission in AGNs. Here, new results from H.E.S.S. observations of extragalactic sources will be presented and their implications for the physics of these sources will be discussed.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, invited review talk, in the proceedings of the "International Workshop on Beamed and Unbeamed Gamma-Rays from Galaxies" 11-15 April 2011, Lapland Hotel Olos, Muonio, Finland, Journal of Physics: Conference Series Volume 355, 201

New AGNs discovered by H.E.S.S

During the last year, six new Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) have been discovered and studied by H.E.S.S. at Very High Energies (VHE). Some of these recent discoveries have been made thanks to new enhanced analysis methods and are presented at this conference for the first time. The three blazars 1ES 0414+009, SHBL J001355.9-185406 and 1RXS J101015.9-311909 have been targeted for observation due to their high levels of radio and X-ray fluxes, while the Fermi/LAT catalogue of bright sources triggered the observation of PKS 0447-439 and AP Librae. Additionally, the BL Lac 1ES 1312-423 was discovered in the field-of-view (FoV) of Centaurus A thanks to the large exposure dedicated by H.E.S.S. to this particularly interesting source. The newly-discovered sources are presented here and in three companion presentations at this conference.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, proceeding from the 25th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics (Heidelberg, Germany, 2010

Sensitivity to point-like sources of the ALTO atmospheric particle detector array, designed for 200 GeV\rm 200\,GeV--50 TeV\rm 50\,TeV γ\gamma-ray astronomy

In the context of atmospheric shower arrays designed for $\gamma$-ray astronomy and in the context of the ALTO project, we present: a study of the impact of heavier nuclei in the cosmic-ray background on the estimated $\gamma$-ray detection performance on the basis of dedicated Monte Carlo simulations, a method to calculate the sensitivity to a point-like source, and finally the required observation times to reach a firm detection on a list of known point-like sources.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in JHEAP (Journal of High-Energy Astrophysics

HESS-II reconstruction strategy and performance in the low-energy (20-150 GeV) domain

International audienceIn mid-2009 a notable upgrade of the H.E.S.S. telescope system will take place: a new telescope with a 600 m2 mirror area and very-high-resolution camera (0.07°) will be positioned at the centre of the present configuration, with the aim of lowering the threshold and enhance its sensitivity in the 100 GeV to several TeV energy range. HESS-II will permit the investigation of the lower energy gamma-ray spectra in various cosmic accelerators, giving information on the origin of the gamma-rays observed, and will detect AGNs with a redshift greater than 0.2 (being less affected by absorption by Extragalactic Background Light-EBL-in this energy range) and will search for new classes of very high energy gamma-ray emitters (pulsars, microquasars, GRB, and dark matter candidates)

Time variations in the deep underground muon flux measured by MACRO

More than 30 million of high-energy muons collected with the MACRO detector at the underground Gran Sasso Laboratory have been used to search for flux variations of different natures. Two kinds of studies were carried out: search for periodic variations and for the occurrence of clusters of events. Different analysis methods, including Lomb-Scargle spectral analysis and Scan Test statistics have been applied to the data.Comment: 6 pages, 4 EPS figures. Talk given at the 29th ICRC, Pune, India, 3-10 August 200