A NECTAr-based upgrade for the Cherenkov cameras of the H.E.S.S. 12-meter telescopes
Abstract
The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) is one of the three arrays of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) currently in operation. It is composed of four 12-meter telescopes and a 28-meter one, and is sensitive to gamma rays in the energy range ~30 GeV - 100 TeV. The cameras of the 12-m telescopes recently underwent a substantial upgrade, with the goal of improving their performance and robustness. The upgrade involved replacing all camera components except for the photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). This meant developing new hardware for the trigger, readout, power, cooling and mechanical systems, and new software for camera control and data acquisition. Several novel technologies were employed in the cameras: the readout is built around the new NECTAr digitizer chip, developed for the next generation of IACTs; the camera electronics is fully controlled and read out via Ethernet using a combination of FPGA and embedded ARM computers; the software uses modern libraries such as Apache Thrift, ZMQ and Protocol buffers. This work describes in detail the design and the performance of the upgraded cameras.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2001.04510,
title = {A NECTAr-based upgrade for the Cherenkov cameras of the H.E.S.S. 12-meter telescopes},
author = {Terry Ashton and Michael Backes and Arnim Balzer and David Berge and Julien Bolmont and Simon Bonnefoy and Francois Brun and Thomas Chaminade and Eric Delagnes and Gerard Fontaine and Matthias Füßling and Gianluca Giavitto and Berrie Giebels and Jean-Francois Glicenstein and Tobias Gräber and Jim Hinton and Albert Jahnke and Stefan Klepser and Marko Kossatz and Axel Kretzschmann and Valentin Lefranc and Holger Leich and Jean-Philippe Lenain and Hartmut Lüdecke and Iryna Lypova and Pascal Manigot and Vincent Marandon and Emmanuel Moulin and Thomas Murach and Mathieu de Naurois and Patrick Nayman and Stefan Ohm and Marek Penno and Duncan Ross and David Salek and Markus Schade and Thomas Schwab and Kleopas Shiningayamwe and Christian Stegmann and Constantin Steppa and Jean-Paul Tavernet and Julian Thornhill and Francois Toussnel and Pascal Vincent},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.04510},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
35 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in "Astroparticle physics"