Design and expected performance of a novel hybrid detector for very-high-energy gamma-ray astrophysics
Abstract
Current detectors for Very-High-Energy γ-ray astrophysics are either pointing instruments with a small field of view (Cherenkov telescopes), or large field-of-view instruments with relatively large energy thresholds (extensive air shower detectors).
In this article, we propose a new hybrid extensive air shower detector sensitive in an energy region starting from about 100 GeV. The detector combines a small water-Cherenkov detector, able to provide a calorimetric measurement of shower particles at ground, with resistive plate chambers which contribute significantly to the accurate shower geometry reconstruction. A full simulation of this detector concept shows that it is able to reach better sensitivity than any previous gamma-ray wide field-of-view experiment in the sub-TeV energy region. It is expected to detect with a 5σ significance a source fainter than the Crab Nebula in one year at 100 GeV and, above 1 TeV a source as faint as 10% of it. As such, this instrument is suited to detect transient phenomena making it a very powerful tool to trigger observations of variable sources and to detect transients coupled to gravitational waves and gamma-ray bursts.- Publication:
-
Astroparticle Physics
- Pub Date:
- May 2018
- DOI:
- 10.1016/j.astropartphys.2018.02.004
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1607.03051
- Bibcode:
- 2018APh....99...34A
- Keywords:
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- Gamma-ray astronomy;
- Extensive air shower detectors;
- Transient sources;
- Gamma-ray bursts;
- Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics;
- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena;
- High Energy Physics - Experiment
- E-Print:
- 10 pages, v4: correct small typo in eq. 1 which does not affect the paper results (calculations and plots)