490 research outputs found
VERITAS Studies of the Supernova Remnants Cas A and IC 443
VERITAS observed the supernova remnants Cassiopeia A (Cas A) and IC 443
during 2007, resulting in strong TeV detections of both sources. Cas A is a
young remnant, and bright in both the radio and nonthermal X-rays, both tracers
of cosmic-ray electrons. IC 443 is a middle-aged composite remnant interacting
with a molecular cloud; the molecular cloud provides an enhanced density of
target material for hadronic cosmic rays to produce TeV gamma rays via pion
decay. The TeV morphology - point-like for Cas A and extended for IC 443 - will
be discussed in the context of existing multiwavelength data on the remnants.Comment: Submitted to Proceedings of "4th Heidelberg International Symposium
on High Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy 2008
3-D Model of Broadband Emission from Supernova Remnants Undergoing Non-linear Diffusive Shock Acceleration
We present a 3-dimensional model of supernova remnants (SNRs) where the
hydrodynamical evolution of the remnant is modeled consistently with nonlinear
diffusive shock acceleration occuring at the outer blast wave. The model
includes particle escape and diffusion outside of the forward shock, and
particle interactions with arbitrary distributions of external ambient
material, such as molecular clouds. We include synchrotron emission and
cooling, bremsstrahlung radiation, neutral pion production, inverse-Compton
(IC), and Coulomb energy-loss. Boardband spectra have been calculated for
typical parameters including dense regions of gas external to a 1000 year old
SNR. In this paper, we describe the details of our model but do not attempt a
detailed fit to any specific remnant. We also do not include magnetic field
amplification (MFA), even though this effect may be important in some young
remnants. In this first presentation of the model we don't attempt a detailed
fit to any specific remnant. Our aim is to develop a flexible platform, which
can be generalized to include effects such as MFA, and which can be easily
adapted to various SNR environments, including Type Ia SNRs, which explode in a
constant density medium, and Type II SNRs, which explode in a pre-supernova
wind. When applied to a specific SNR, our model will predict cosmic-ray spectra
and multi-wavelength morphology in projected images for instruments with
varying spatial and spectral resolutions. We show examples of these spectra and
images and emphasize the importance of measurements in the hard X-ray, GeV, and
TeV gamma-ray bands for investigating key ingredients in the acceleration
mechanism, and for deducing whether or not TeV emission is produced by IC from
electrons or neutral pions from protons.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, accepted by Apj, 24 June 200
Investigating a Deep Learning Method to Analyze Images from Multiple Gamma-ray Telescopes
Imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope (IACT) arrays record images from air
showers initiated by gamma rays entering the atmosphere, allowing astrophysical
sources to be observed at very high energies. To maximize IACT sensitivity,
gamma-ray showers must be efficiently distinguished from the dominant
background of cosmic-ray showers using images from multiple telescopes. A
combination of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) with a recurrent neural
network (RNN) has been proposed to perform this task. Using CTLearn, an open
source Python package using deep learning to analyze data from IACTs, with
simulated data from the upcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), we implement
a CNN-RNN network and find no evidence that sorting telescope images by total
amplitude improves background rejection performance.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, Proceedings of the 2019 New York Scientific Data
Summit (NYSDS
Prototype 9.7 m Schwarzschild-Couder telescope for the Cherenkov Telescope Array: status of the optical system
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is an international project for a
next-generation ground-based gamma ray observatory, aiming to improve on the
sensitivity of current-generation experiments by an order of magnitude and
provide energy coverage from 30 GeV to more than 300 TeV. The 9.7m
Schwarzschild-Couder (SC) candidate medium-size telescope for CTA exploits a
novel aplanatic two-mirror optical design that provides a large field of view
of 8 degrees and substantially improves the off-axis performance giving better
angular resolution across all of the field of view with respect to
single-mirror telescopes. The realization of the SC optical design implies the
challenging production of large aspherical mirrors accompanied by a
submillimeter-precision custom alignment system. In this contribution we report
on the status of the implementation of the optical system on a prototype 9.7 m
SC telescope located at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in southern
Arizona.Comment: Proceedings of the 35th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC
2017), Busan, Korea. All CTA contributions at arXiv:1709.0348
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