The camera of the fifth H.E.S.S. telescope. Part I: System description

In July 2012, as the four ground-based gamma-ray telescopes of the H.E.S.S. (High Energy Stereoscopic System) array reached their tenth year of operation in Khomas Highlands, Namibia, a fifth telescope took its first data as part of the system. This new Cherenkov detector, comprising a 614.5 m^2 reflector with a highly pixelized camera in its focal plane, improves the sensitivity of the current array by a factor two and extends its energy domain down to a few tens of GeV. The present part I of the paper gives a detailed description of the fifth H.E.S.S. telescope's camera, presenting the details of both the hardware and the software, emphasizing the main improvements as compared to previous H.E.S.S. camera technology.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in NIM

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

The Cherenkov Telescope Array Large Size Telescope

The two arrays of the Very High Energy gamma-ray observatory Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will include four Large Size Telescopes (LSTs) each with a 23 m diameter dish and 28 m focal distance. These telescopes will enable CTA to achieve a low-energy threshold of 20 GeV, which is critical for important studies in astrophysics, astroparticle physics and cosmology. This work presents the key specifications and performance of the current LST design in the light of the CTA scientific objectives.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, In Proceedings of the 33rd International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2013), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). All CTA contributions at arXiv:1307.223

Design concepts for the Cherenkov Telescope Array CTA: an advanced facility for ground-based high-energy gamma-ray astronomy

Ground-based gamma-ray astronomy has had a major breakthrough with the impressive results obtained using systems of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. Ground-based gamma-ray astronomy has a huge potential in astrophysics, particle physics and cosmology. CTA is an international initiative to build the next generation instrument, with a factor of 5-10 improvement in sensitivity in the 100 GeV-10 TeV range and the extension to energies well below 100 GeV and above 100 TeV. CTA will consist of two arrays (one in the north, one in the south) for full sky coverage and will be operated as open observatory. The design of CTA is based on currently available technology. This document reports on the status and presents the major design concepts of CTA

La photo-détection avec les SiPM dans le cadre du CTA

International audienc

Towards a flexible array control and operation framework for CTA

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) \cite{CTA:2010} will be the successor to current Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACT) like H.E.S.S., MAGIC and VERITAS. CTA will improve in sensitivity by about an order of magnitude compared to the current generation of IACTs. The energy range will extend from well below 100 GeV to above 100 TeV. To accomplish these goals, CTA will consist of two arrays, one in each hemisphere, consisting of 50-80 telescopes and composed of three different telescope types with different mirror sizes. It will be the first open observatory for very high energy $\gamma$-ray astronomy. The Array Control working group of CTA is currently evaluating existing technologies which are best suited for a project like CTA. The considered solutions comprise the ALMA Common Software (ACS), the OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) and the Data Distribution Service (DDS) for bulk data transfer. The first applications, like an automatic observation scheduler and the control software for some prototype instrumentation have been developed.Comment: In Proceedings of the 2012 Heidelberg Symposium on High Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy. All CTA contributions at arXiv:1211.184

The ATLAS liquid argon calorimeter read-out system

The Liquid Argon calorimeters play a central role in the ATLAS experiment. The environment at the LHC collider imposes challenging tasks to their read-out system. To achieve measurements of particles and trigger signals at high precision, the detector signals are processed at various stages before reaching the Data Acquisition system (DAQ). Signals from the calorimeter cells are received by front-end boards, which digitize and sample the incoming pulse. Read-out Driver (ROD) boards further process the data at a trigger rate of up to 75 kHz. An optimal filtering procedure is applied to optimize the signal-to-noise ratio. The ROD boards calculate precise energy, time and quality of the detector pulse, which are then sent to the DAQ. In addition, the RODs perform a monitoring of the data. The architecture of the ATLAS Liquid Argon detector read-out is discussed, in particular the design and functionality of the ROD board. Performance results obtained with ROD prototypes as well as experience from complete test setups with final production boards are reported

Simultaneous operation and control of about 100 telescopes for the Cherenkov Telescope Array

The CTA (Cherenkov Telescope Array) project is an initiative to build the next generation ground-based very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray instrument. Compared to current imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope experiments CTA will extend the energy range and improve the angular resolution while increasing the sensitivity by a factor of 10. With these capabilities it is expected that CTA will increase the number of known VHE gamma-ray sources from O(100) to O(1000), and will raise the field of ground based VHE gamma-ray astronomy to the level of astronomy with radio waves or X-rays. With about separate 100 telescopes it will be operated as an observatory open to a wide astrophysics and particle physics community, providing a deep insight into the non-thermal high-energy universe. The presentation will give an overview on the principles of the CTA Array Control system (ACTL), responsible for several essential control tasks including the evaluation, selection, preparation, scheduling, and finally the execution of observations with the array. A possible basic distributed software framework for ACTL being considered is the ALMA Common Software (ACS). Used by several projects, this open-source software was originally developed for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), a joint project between astronomical organizations in Europe, North America, and Asia for a millimeter and sub-millimeter array. ALMA is presently being commissioned in Chile and will consist of at least fifty-four 12 meter antennas and a further twelve 7 meter antennas. The ACS framework follows a container component model and contains a high level abstraction layer to integrate different types of device. To achieve a low-level consolidation of connecting control hardware, OPC UA client functionality is integrated directly into ACS, thus allowing interaction with other OPC UA capable hardware. In addition to the presentation of the ACS middleware, new techniques for automatic code generation based on an UML representation of the ACS components will be introduced and illustrated with first examples

The NectarCAM camera project

In Proceedings of the 33rd International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2013), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). All CTA contributions at arXiv:1307.2232In the framework of the next generation of Cherenkov telescopes, the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), NectarCAM is a camera designed for the medium size telescopes covering the central energy range of 100 GeV to 30 TeV. NectarCAM will be finely pixelated (~ 1800 pixels for a 8 degree field of view, FoV) in order to image atmospheric Cherenkov showers by measuring the charge deposited within a few nanoseconds time-window. It will have additional features like the capacity to record the full waveform with GHz sampling for every pixel and to measure event times with nanosecond accuracy. An array of a few tens of medium size telescopes, equipped with NectarCAMs, will achieve up to a factor of ten improvement in sensitivity over existing instruments in the energy range of 100 GeV to 10 TeV. The camera is made of roughly 250 independent read-out modules, each composed of seven photo-multipliers, with their associated high voltage base and control, a read-out board and a multi-service backplane board. The read-out boards use NECTAr (New Electronics for the Cherenkov Telescope Array) ASICs which have the dual functionality of analogue memories and Analogue to Digital Converter (ADC). The camera trigger to be used will be flexible so as to minimize the read-out dead-time of the NECTAr chips. We present the camera concept and the design and tests of the various subcomponents. The design includes the mechanical parts, the cooling of the electronics, the readout, the data acquisition, the trigger, the monitoring and services