Related papers: Background Systematic Studies in VERITAS Data
The most commonly used techniques for estimating the background contribution in IACT data analysis are the ring background model and the reflected region methods. However, these two techniques are poorly suited for analyses of sources with…
VERITAS is an array of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes designed for very high energy gamma ray (E>100,GeV) observations of astrophysical sources. The experiment began its scientific observation program in the 2006/2007 observing…
Gamma-ray observations ranging from hundreds of MeV to tens of TeV are a valuable tool for studying particle acceleration and diffusion within our galaxy. Supernova remnants, pulsar wind nebulae, and star-forming regions are the main…
Gamma ray observations from a few hundred MeV up to tens of TeV are a valuable tool for studying particle acceleration and diffusion within our galaxy. Constructing a coherent physical picture of particle accelerators such as supernova…
Satellite imagery is increasingly used to complement traditional data collection approaches such as surveys and censuses across scientific disciplines. However, we ask: Do all places on earth benefit equally from this new wealth of…
The incorporation of uncertainties to calculations of signal significance in planned experiments is an actual task. Several approaches to this problem are discussed. We present a procedure for taking into account the systematic uncertainty…
Clusters of galaxies are one of the few prominent classes of objects predicted to emit gamma rays not yet detected by satellites like EGRET or ground-based Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs). The detection of Very High Energy…
The experimental issue of the search for new particles of unknown mass poses the challenge of exploring a wide interval to look for the usual signatures represented by excess of events above the background. A side effect of such a broad…
A large fraction of papers in the climate literature includes erroneous uses of significance tests. A Bayesian analysis is presented to highlight the meaning of significance tests and why typical misuse occurs. It is concluded that a…
When reading peer-reviewed scientific literature describing any analysis of empirical data, it is natural and correct to proceed with the underlying assumption that experiments have made good faith efforts to ensure that their analyses…
Observational cosmology is entering an era in which high precision will be required in both measurement and data analysis. Accuracy, however, can only be achieved with a thorough understanding of potential sources of contamination from…
Whether a correlation exists between the radio and gamma-ray flux densities of blazars is a long-standing question, and one that is difficult to answer confidently because of various observational biases which may either dilute or…
VERITAS, an Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope (IACT) system for gammma-ray astronomy in the GeV-TeV range, has recently completed its first season of observations with a full array of four telescopes. A number of astrophysical…
Upcoming and ongoing large area weak lensing surveys will also discover large samples of galaxy clusters. Accurate and precise masses of galaxy clusters are of major importance for cosmology, for example, in establishing well calibrated…
The field of gamma ray astronomy relies heavily on the statistical analysis of data. Because of the paucity of data, and the often large errors associated with detecting gamma rays, analysis and interpretation of the data require…
We search for the signature of parity-violating physics in the cosmic microwave background, called cosmic birefringence, using the Planck data release 4. We initially find a birefringence angle of $\beta=0.30\pm0.11$ (68% C.L.) for nearly…
We consider statistics of spatial averages estimated by weighting observations over an arbitrary spatial domain using identical and independent measuring devices, and derive an account of bias and variance in the presence of missing…
Some electromagnetically observed ultra-compact binaries will be strong gravitational wave sources for space-based detectors like the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). These sources have historically been referred to as…
We describe a method for fitting distributions to data which only requires knowledge of the parametric form of either the signal or the background but not both. The unknown distribution is fit using a non-parametric kernel density…
Binary Systems are the most studied sources of gravitational waves. The mechanisms of emission and the behavior of the orbital parameters are well known and can be written in analytic form in several cases. Besides, the strongest indication…