NectarCAM : a camera for the medium size telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array

NectarCAM is a camera proposed for the medium-sized telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) covering the central energy range of ~100 GeV to ~30 TeV. It has a modular design and is based on the NECTAr chip, at the heart of which is a GHz sampling Switched Capacitor Array and a 12-bit Analog to Digital converter. The camera will be equipped with 265 7-photomultiplier modules, covering a field of view of 8 degrees. Each module includes the photomultiplier bases, high voltage supply, pre-amplifier, trigger, readout and Ethernet transceiver. The recorded events last between a few nanoseconds and tens of nanoseconds. The camera trigger will be flexible so as to minimize the read-out dead-time of the NECTAr chips. NectarCAM is designed to sustain a data rate of more than 4 kHz with less than 5\% dead time. The camera concept, the design and tests of the various subcomponents and results of thermal and electrical prototypes are presented. The design includes the mechanical structure, cooling of the electronics, read-out, clock distribution, slow control, data-acquisition, triggering, monitoring and services.Comment: In Proceedings of the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2015), The Hague, The Netherlands. All CTA contributions at arXiv:1508.0589

Reception Test of Petals for the End Cap TEC+ of the CMS Silicon Strip Tracker

The silicon strip tracker of the CMS experiment has been completed and was inserted into the CMS detector in late 2007. The largest sub system of the tracker are its end caps, comprising two large end caps (TEC) each containing 3200 silicon strip modules. To ease construction, the end caps feature a modular design: groups of about 20 silicon modules are placed on sub-assemblies called petals and these self-contained elements are then mounted onto the TEC support structures. Each end cap consists of 144 such petals, which were built and fully qualified by several institutes across Europe. Fro

Integration of the End Cap TEC+ of the CMS Silicon Strip Tracker

The silicon strip tracker of the CMS experiment has been completed and inserted into the CMS detector in late 2007. The largest sub-system of the tracker is its end cap system, comprising two large end caps (TEC) each containing 3200 silicon strip modules. To ease construction, the end caps feature a modular design: groups of about 20 silicon modules are placed on sub-assemblies called petals and these self-contained elements are then mounted into the TEC support structures. Each end cap consists of 144 petals, and the insertion of these petals into the end cap structure is referred to as TEC integration. The two end caps were integrated independently in Aachen (TEC+) and at CERN (TEC--). This note deals with the integration of TEC+, describing procedures for end cap integration and for quality control during testing of integrated sections of the end cap and presenting results from the testing

Study of large hemispherical photomultiplier tubes for the ANTARES neutrino telescope

The ANTARES neutrino telescope, to be immersed depth in the Mediterranean Sea, will consist of a 3 dimensional matrix of 900 large area photomultiplier tubes housed in pressure resistant glass spheres. The selection of the optimal photomultiplier was a critical step for the project and required an intensive phase of tests and developments carried out in close collaboration with the main manufacturers worldwide. This paper provides an overview of the tests performed by the collaboration and describes in detail the features of the PMT chosen for ANTARES

Very-High-Energy gamma-ray astronomy with the ALTO observatory

International audienceALTO is a concept/project in the exploratory phase since 2013 aiming to build a wide-field Very-High-Energy gamma-ray observatory at very high altitude in the Southern hemisphere. The operation of such an observatory will complement the Northern hemisphere observations performed by HAWC and will make possible the exploration of the central region of our Galaxy and the hunt for PeVatrons, and to search for extended Galactic objects such as the Vela Supernova Remnant and the Fermi bubbles. The ALTO project is aiming for a substantial improvement of the Water Cherenkov Detection Technique by increasing the altitude of the observatory in order to lower the energy threshold, by using a layer of scintillator below the water tank to optimize the signal over background discrimination, by minimizing the size of the tanks and having a more compact array to sample the air-shower footprints with better precision, and by using precise electronics which will provide time-stamped waveforms to improve the angular and energy resolution. ALTO is designed to have as low an energy threshold as possible so as to act as a fast trigger alert to other observatories -- primarily to the Southern part of CTA -- for transient Galactic and extra-galactic phenomena. The wide field-of-view resulting from the detection technique allows the survey of a large portion of the sky continuously, thus giving the possibility to access emission from Gamma-Ray Bursts, Active Galactic Nuclei and X-ray binary flares, and extended emissions of both Galactic (Vela SNR, Fermi bubbles) and extra-galactic (AGN radio lobes) origin. The ALTO observatory will be composed of about a thousand detection units, each of which consists of a Water Cherenkov Detector positioned above a liquid Scintillation Detector, distributed within an area of about 200 m in diameter. The project is in the design study phase which is soon to be followed by a prototyping phase. The ALTO concept, design study and expected sensitivity together with the prototype status and plans for final deployment in the Southern hemisphere will be the subjects of this presentation

Simulations of the muon flux sensitivity to rock perturbation associated to hydrogeological processes

Muon tomography is a method to investigate the in-situ rock density. It is based on the absorption of cosmic-ray muons according to the quantity of matter (thickness and density). Numerical simulations are performed in order to estimate the expected muon flux in LSBB Underground Research Laboratory (URL) (Rustrel, France). The aim of the muon measurements in the underground galleries of this laboratory is to characterize the spatial and temporal density variations caused by water transfer in the unsaturated zone of the Fontaine-de-Vaucluse karstic aquifer

Studies of Gamma Ray Shower Reconstruction Using Deep Learning

International audienceThe Cosmic Multiperspective Event Tracker (CoMET) R&D project aims to optimize the techniques for the detection of soft-spectrum sources through very-high-energy gamma-ray observations using particle detectors (called ALTO detectors), and atmospheric Cherenkov light collectors (called CLiC detectors). The accurate reconstruction of the energies and maximum depths of gamma-ray events using a surface array only, is an especially challenging problem at low energies, and the focus of the project.In this contribution, we leverage Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) using the ALTO detectors only, to try to improve reconstruction performance at lower energies ( < 1 TeV ) as compared to the SEMLA analysis procedure, which is a more traditional method using manually derived features

Simulations of the muon flux sensitivity to rock perturbation associated to hydrogeological processes

Muon tomography is a method to investigate the in-situ rock density. It is based on the absorption of cosmic-ray muons according to the quantity of matter (thickness and density). Numerical simulations are performed in order to estimate the expected muon flux in LSBB Underground Research Laboratory (URL) (Rustrel, France). The aim of the muon measurements in the underground galleries of this laboratory is to characterize the spatial and temporal density variations caused by water transfer in the unsaturated zone of the Fontaine-de-Vaucluse karstic aquifer

Expected performance of the ALTO particle detector array designed for 200 GeV - 50 TeV gamma-ray astronomy

The ALTO project aims to build a particle detector array for very high energy gamma ray observations optimized for soft spectrum sources. The accurate reconstruction of gamma ray events, in particular their energies, using a surface array is an especially challenging problem at the low energies ALTO aims to optimize for. In this contribution, we leverage Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to improve reconstruction performance at lower energies ( smaller 1 TeV ) as compared to the SEMLA analysis procedure, which is a more traditional method using mainly manually derived features.rnWe present performance figures using different network architectures and training settings, both in terms of accuracy and training time, as well as the impact of various data augmentation techniques

The CoMET multiperspective event tracker for wide field-of-view gamma-ray astronomy

The ALTO project aims to build a particle detector array for very high energy gamma ray observations optimized for soft spectrum sources. The accurate reconstruction of gamma ray events, in particular their energies, using a surface array is an especially challenging problem at the low energies ALTO aims to optimize for. In this contribution, we leverage Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to improve reconstruction performance at lower energies ( smaller 1 TeV ) as compared to the SEMLA analysis procedure, which is a more traditional method using mainly manually derived features.rnWe present performance figures using different network architectures and training settings, both in terms of accuracy and training time, as well as the impact of various data augmentation techniques