English

Geomagnetic field and altitude effects on the performance of future IACT arrays

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics 2015-01-14 v2

Abstract

The performance of IACT's arrays is sensitive to the altitude and geomagnetic field (GF) of the observatory site. Both effects play important role in the region of the sub-TeV gamma-ray measurements. We investigate the influence of GF on detection rates and the energy thresholds for five possible locations of the future CTA observatory using the Monte Carlo simulations. We conclude that the detection rates of gamma rays and the energy thresholds of the arrays can be fitted with linear functions of the altitude and the component of the GF perpendicular to the shower axis core. These results can be directly extrapolated for any possible localization of the CTA. In this paper we also show the influence of both geophysical effects on the images of shower and gamma/hadron separation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1405.1846,
  title  = {Geomagnetic field and altitude effects on the performance of future IACT arrays},
  author = {M. Szanecki and K. Bernlöhr and D. Sobczyńska and A. Niedźwiecki and J. Sitarek and W. Bednarek},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1405.1846},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

4 pages, 6 figures, two-column. Contribution to ICRC 2013 proceedings