59 research outputs found
Tunka Advanced Instrument for cosmic rays and Gamma Astronomy
The paper is a script of a lecture given at the ISAPP-Baikal summer school in
2018. The lecture gives an overview of the Tunka Advanced Instrument for cosmic
rays and Gamma Astronomy (TAIGA) facility including historical introduction,
description of existing and future setups, and outreach and open data
activities.Comment: Lectures given at the ISAPP-Baikal Summer School 2018: Exploring the
Universe through multiple messengers, 12-21 July 2018, Bol'shie Koty, Russi
TAIGA -- an advanced hybrid detector complex for astroparticle physics and high energy gamma-ray astronomy
The physical motivations, present status, main results in study of cosmic
rays and in the field of gamma-ray astronomy as well future plans of the
TAIGA-1 (Tunka Advanced Instrument for cosmic ray physics and Gamma Astronomy)
project are presented. The TAIGA observatory addresses ground-based gamma-ray
astronomy and astroparticle physics at energies from a few TeV to several PeV,
as well as cosmic ray physics from 100 TeV to several EeV. The pilot TAIGA-1
complex is located in the Tunka valley, ~50 km west from the southern tip of
the lake Baikal.Comment: Submission to SciPost Phys. Proc., 10 pages, 2 figure
Method of Separation Between Light and Heavy Groups of Primary CR Nuclei by LDF of Cherenkov Light in the Range 300–3000 TeV
The problem of chemical composition below the knee in the cosmic-ray energy spectrum has not yet been solved due to low statistics collected from direct experiments. In the HiSCORE experiment the lateral distribution functions (LDF) of Cherenkov light of EASs with energy greater than hundreds of TeV can be measured in detail for millions of individual events. A full steepness of LDF is sensitive to the depth of shower maximum and as a result to primary particle type. In this paper, we developed a parametric method of separation between heavy and light groups of nuclei using the ’knee-like’ approximation of LDF and taking into account measurement uncertainty
Primary Cosmic Rays Energy Spectrum and Mean Mass Composition by the Data of the TAIGA Astrophysical Complex
The corrected dependence of the mean depth of the EAS maximum on
the energy was obtained from the data of the Tunka-133 array for 7 years and
the TAIGA-HiSCORE array for 2 year. The parameter ,
characterizing the mean mass compositon was derived from these results. The
differential energy spectrum of primary cosmic rays in the energy range of
- \,eV was reconstructed using the new
parameter the Cherenkov light flux at the core distance 100 m.}Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, Submitted to SciPost Phys.Pro
The Search for Diffuse Gamma Rays Using Data from the Tunka-Grande Experiment
The Tunka-Grande array is part of an experimental complex located in the Tunka Valley (Republic of Buryatia, Russia) about 50 km from Lake Baikal. This complex also contains the Tunka-133 and Tunka-Rex arrays. The aim of this complex is to study the primary cosmic ray energy spectrum and mass composition in the energy range of 1016–1018 eV, and to search for diffuse gamma rays in the energy range of 5 × 1016–5 × 1017 eV. The design of the Tunka-Grande array and the procedure for reconstructing the parameters of extensive air showers (EASes) are described, and preliminary results are presented from the search for diffuse gamma rays with energies of more than 5 × 1016 eV
The Taiga project
The TAIGA project is aimed at solving the fundamental problems of gamma-ray astronomy and physics of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays with the help of the complex of detectors, located in the Tunka valley (Siberia, Russia). TAIGA includes a wide-angle large area Tunka-HiSCORE array, designed to detect gamma-rays of ultrahigh energies in the range 20 - 1000 TeV and charged cosmic rays with energies of 100 TeV - 100 PeV, large area muon detector to improve the rejection of background EAS protons and nuclei and a network of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes for gamma radiation detection. We discuss the goals and objectives of the complex features of each detector and the results obtained in the first stage of the HiSCORE installation
Towards gamma-ray astronomy with timing arrays
The gamma-ray energy regime beyond 10 TeV is crucial for the search for the most energetic Galactic accelerators. The energy spectra of most known gamma-ray emitters only reach up to few 10s of TeV, with 80 TeV from the Crab Nebula being the highest energy so far observed significantly. Uncovering their spectral shape up to few 100 TeV could answer the question whether some of these objects are cosmic ray Pevatrons, i.e. Galactic PeV accelerators.Sensitive observations in this energy range and beyond require very large effective detector areas of several 10s to 100 square-km. While imaging air Cherenkov telescopes have proven to be the instruments of choice in the GeV to TeV energy range, very large area telescope arrays are limited by the number of required readout channels per instrumented square-km (due to the large number of channels per telescope). Alternatively, the shower-front sampling technique allows to instrument large effective areas and also naturally provides large viewing angles of the instrument. Solely measuring the shower front light density and timing (hence timing- arrays), the primary particle properties are reconstructed on the basis of the measured lateral density function and the shower front arrival times. This presentation gives an overview of the technique, its goals, and future perspective
The wide-aperture gamma-ray telescope TAIGA-HiSCORE in the Tunka Valley: Design, composition and commissioning
The new TAIGA-HiSCORE non-imaging Cherenkov array aims to detect air showers induced by gamma rays above 30 TeV and to study cosmic rays above 100 TeV. TAIGA-HiSCORE is made of integrating air Cherenkov detector stations with a wide field of view (0.6 sr), placed at a distance of about 100 m. They cover an area of initially ∼0.25 km (prototype array), and of ∼5 km at the final phase of the experiment. Each station includes 4 PMTs with 20 or 25 cm diameter, equipped with light guides shaped as Winstone cones. We describe the design, specifications of the read-out, DAQ and control and monitoring systems of the array. The present 28 detector stations of the TAIGA-HiSCORE engineering setup are in operation since September 2015
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