Cerenkov Events Seen by The TALE Air Fluorescence Detector

The Telescope Array Low-Energy Extension (TALE) is a hybrid, Air Fluorescence Detector (FD) / Scintillator Array, designed to study cosmic ray initiated showers at energies above $\sim3\times10^{16}$ eV. Located in the western Utah desert, the TALE FD is comprised of 10 telescopes which cover the elevation range 31-58$^{\circ}$ in addition to 14 telescopes with elevation coverage of 3-31$^{\circ}$. As with all other FD's, a subset of the shower events recorded by TALE are ones for which the Cerenkov light produced by the shower particles dominates the total observed light signal. In fact, for the telescopes with higher elevation coverage, low energy Cerenkov events form the vast majority of triggered cosmic ray events. In the typical FD data analysis procedure, this subset of events is discarded and only events for which the majority of signal photons come from air fluorescence are kept. In this talk, I will report on a study to reconstruct the "Cerenkov Events" seen by the high elevation viewing telescopes of TALE. Monte Carlo studies and a first look at real events observed by TALE look very promising. Even as a monocular detector, the geometrical reconstruction method employed in this analysis allows for a pointing accuracy on the order of a degree. Preliminary Monte Carlo studies indicate that, the expected energy resolution is better than 25$$. It may be possible to extend the low energy reach of TALE to below $10^{16}$ eV. This would be the first time a detector designed specifically as an air fluorescence detector is used as an imaging Cerenkov detector.Comment: Presentation at the DPF 2013 Meeting of the American Physical Society Division of Particles and Fields, Santa Cruz, California, August 13-17, 2013. 5 pages, 2 figure

Studies of the nature of the low-energy, gamma-like background for Cherenkov Telescope Array

The upcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) project is expected to provide unprecedented sensitivity in the low-energy ( <~100 GeV) range for Cherenkov telescopes. In order to exploit fully the potential of the telescopes the standard analysis methods for gamma/hadron separation might need to be revised. We study the composition of the background by identifying events composed mostly of a single electromagnetic subcascade or double subcascade from a {\pi}0 (or another neutral meson) decay. We apply the standard simulation and analysis chain of CTA to evaluate the potential of the standard analysis to reject such events.Comment: All CTA contributions at arXiv:1709.03483. Proc. of the 35th International Cosmic Ray Conference, Busan, Kore

A Trigger Interface Board to manage trigger and timing signals in CTA Large-Sized Telescope and Medium-Sized Telescope cameras

One of the main goals of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) observatory is to improve the $\gamma$-ray detection sensitivity by an order of magnitude, compared to the current ground-based observatories. Widening the energy coverage down to 20 GeV and up to 300 TeV is also an important goal. This goal will be possible by using Large-Sized Telescopes (LSTs) for the energy range of 20--200 GeV, Medium-Sized Telescopes (MSTs) for 100 GeV--10 TeV, and Small-Sized Telescopes (SSTs) for energies above 5 TeV. The LSTs, which focus on the lowest energies, are operated in a region dominated by background events originated from the night sky background. To reduce such background events as much as possible, the LST cameras are only read out if at least two of them have been triggered in a short-time coincidence window. Such trigger is implemented for each LST camera in a dedicated module called Trigger Interface Board (TIB). In addition, the TIB is also used in MSTs equipped with the NectarCAM camera system to manage the different trigger and timing signals between LSTs and MSTs, as well as to monitor the different counting rates and dead-time of the cameras. It also assigns a time stamp to each event, which is recorded along with the information provided by the CTA global timing distribution system, based on the White Rabbit protocol. Therefore, the event arrival time can be determined in a redundant way. In this contribution, the main features and the technical performance of the TIB are presented.Comment: All CTA contributions at arXiv:1709.03483. In Proceedings of the 35th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2017), Busan, Kore

Galactic transient sources with the Cherenkov Telescope Array

A wide variety of Galactic sources show transient emission at soft and hard X-ray energies: low-mass and high-mass X-ray binaries containing compact objects (e.g., novae, microquasars, transitional millisecond pulsars, supergiant fast X-ray transients), isolated neutron stars exhibiting extreme variability as magnetars as well as pulsar wind nebulae. Although most of them can show emission up to MeV and/or GeV energies, many have not yet been detected in the TeV domain by Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes. In this paper, we explore the feasibility of detecting new Galactic transients with the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) and the prospects for studying them with Target of Opportunity observations. We show that CTA will likely detect new sources in the TeV regime, such as the massive microquasars in the Cygnus region, low-mass X-ray binaries with low-viewing angle, flaring emission from the Crab pulsar-wind nebula or other novae explosions, among others. We also discuss the multi-wavelength synergies with other instruments and large astronomical facilities.Comment: 31 pages, 22 figures, submitted to MNRA

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