Extending the Li&Ma method to include PSF information
arXiv:1511.07265 · doi:10.1016/j.astropartphys.2015.10.001
Abstract
The so called Li&Ma formula is still the most frequently used method for estimating the significance of observations carried out by Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes. In this work a straightforward extension of the method for point sources that profits from the good imaging capabilities of current instruments is proposed. It is based on a likelihood ratio under the assumption of a well-known PSF and a smooth background. Its performance is tested with Monte Carlo simulations based on real observations and its sensitivity is compared to standard methods which do not incorporate PSF information. The gain of significance that can be attributed to the inclusion of the PSF is around of 10% and can be boosted if a background model is assumed or a finer binning is used.
10 pages, 7 figures, 3 Tables, Presented at SEA 2014 (Teruel)
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Cited by in corpus (3)
- Gamma-Ray Dark Matter Searches in Milky Way Satellites -- A Comparative Review of Data Analysis Methods and Current Results
- Statistical Tools for Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes
- Statistical treatment of searches for counterparts of positionally-uncertain astrophysical sources: from flux upper limits to detection