Post-launch performance of the Fermi Large Area Telescope

Abstract

The Large Area Telescope (LAT) on-board the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope started nominal operations on August 13, 2008, after about 60 days of instrument checkout and commissioning and is currently performing an all-sky gamma-ray survey from 30 MeV to above 300 GeV with unprecedented sensitivity and angular resolution. The LAT pre-launch response was tuned using Monte Carlo simulations and test beam data from a campaign necessarily limited in scope. This suggested a conservative approach in dealing with systematics that affect the reconstruction analysis of the first months of data taking. The first major update of the instrument performance based on flight data is now being completed. Not only are the LAT calibrations now based on flight data, but also the ground event reconstruction has been updated to accommodate on-orbit calibrations, and response was carefully verified using real data from celestial sources. In this contribution we describe the current best knowledge of the instrument, and our plans towards releasing public response functions to support data release in year 2.

Contribution to the 31st ICRC, Lodz, Poland, July 2009; 4 pages, 7 figures. Minor corrections

References in corpus (1)

• The On-orbit Calibrations for the Fermi Large Area Telescope

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