ANN-based energy reconstruction procedure for TACTIC gamma-ray telescope and its comparison with other conventional methods

Abstract

The energy estimation procedures employed by different groups, for determining the energy of the primary $\gamma$-ray using a single atmospheric Cherenkov imaging telescope, include methods like polynomial fitting in SIZE and DISTANCE, general least square fitting and look-up table based interpolation. A novel energy reconstruction procedure, based on the utilization of Artificial Neural Network (ANN), has been developed for the TACTIC atmospheric Cherenkov imaging telescope. The procedure uses a 3:30:1 ANN configuration with resilient backpropagation algorithm to estimate the energy of a $\gamma$-ray like event on the basis of its image SIZE, DISTANCE and zenith angle. The new ANN-based energy reconstruction method, apart from yielding an energy resolution of $\sim$ 26%, which is comparable to that of other single imaging telescopes, has the added advantage that it considers zenith angle dependence as well. Details of the ANN-based energy estimation procedure along with its comparative performance with other conventional energy reconstruction methods are presented in the paper and the results indicate that amongst all the methods considered in this work, ANN method yields the best results. The performance of the ANN-based energy reconstruction has also been validated by determining the energy spectrum of the Crab Nebula in the energy range 1-16 TeV, as measured by the TACTIC telescope.

23pages, 9 figures Accepted for publication in NIM A

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Cited by in corpus (9)

• Comparative performance of some popular ANN algorithms on benchmark and function approximation problems
• Artificial Neural Network-based error compensation procedure for low-cost encoders
• Multiwavelength study of VHE emission from Markarian 501 using TACTIC observations during April-May, 2012
• TeV Gamma-ray Observations of Markarian 421 using TACTIC during 2009-10
• Deep Learning for Energy Estimation and Particle Identification in Gamma-ray Astronomy
• Multi-wavelength study of Mrk 421 TeV flare observed with \emph{TACTIC} telescope in February 2010
• Study of short term enhanced TeV $\gamma$- ray emission from Mrk 421 observed with TACTIC on December 28, 2014
• Artificial Neural Network based gamma-hadron segregation methodology for TACTIC telescope
• Simulation studies for optimizing the trigger generation criteria for the TACTIC telescope