Detection of the Crab Nebula with the 9.7 m Prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope

Abstract

The Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (SCT) is a telescope concept proposed for the Cherenkov Telescope Array. It employs a dual-mirror optical design to remove comatic aberrations over an $8^{\circ }$ field of view, and a high-density silicon photomultiplier camera (with a pixel resolution of 4 arcmin) to record Cherenkov emission from cosmic ray and gamma-ray initiated particle cascades in the atmosphere. The prototype SCT (pSCT), comprising a 9.7 m diameter primary mirror and a partially instrumented camera with 1536 pixels, has been constructed at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory. The telescope was inaugurated in January 2019, with commissioning continuing throughout 2019. We describe the first campaign of observations with the pSCT, conducted in January and February of 2020, and demonstrate the detection of gamma-ray emission from the Crab Nebula with a statistical significance of $8.6\sigma$.

arXiv comment13 pages, 12 figures, 3 tables, submitted to Astroparticle Physics

References in corpus (20)

• Observations of the Crab Nebula with H.E.S.S
• The First VERITAS Telescope
• The major upgrade of the MAGIC telescopes, Part I: The hardware improvements and the commissioning of the system
• Design and Operation of FACT -- The First G-APD Cherenkov Telescope
• Wide field aplanatic two-mirror telescopes for ground-based gamma-ray astronomy
• A New Analysis Method for Reconstructing the Arrival Direction of TeV Gamma-rays Using a Single Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope
• Gamma-Hadron Separation Methods for the VERITAS Array of Four Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes
• TARGET: A multi-channel digitizer chip for very-high-energy gamma-ray telescopes
• First optical validation of a Schwarzschild Couder telescope: the ASTRI SST-2M Cherenkov telescope
• First detection of the Crab Nebula at TeV energies with a Cherenkov telescope in a dual-mirror Schwarzschild-Couder configuration: the ASTRI-Horn telescope
• An LED-based Flasher System for VERITAS
• TARGET 5: a new multi-channel digitizer with triggering capabilities for gamma-ray atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes
• Monte Carlo Studies of medium-size telescope designs for the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• Construction of a medium-sized Schwarzschild-Couder telescope as a candidate for the Cherenkov Telescope Array: development of the optical alignment system
• Status of the Medium-Sized Telescope for the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• Eventdisplay: An Analysis and Reconstruction Package for Ground-based Gamma-ray Astronomy
• TARGET: toward a solution for the readout electronics of the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• Verification of the Optical System of the 9.7-m Prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope
• Camera design and performance of the prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope for the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• Development and operations of INFN optical modules for the SCT Telescope camera proposed for the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory

Cited by in corpus (10)

• The development of ground-based Gamma-ray astronomy: a historical overview of the pioneering experiments
• Mirror production for the Cherenkov telescopes of the ASTRI Mini-Array and of the MST project for the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• Design and performance of the prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope camera
• CTC and CT5TEA: an advanced multi-channel digitizer and trigger ASIC for imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes
• Performance of the upgraded VERITAS Stellar Intensity Interferometer (VSII)
• How to detect gamma-rays from ground: an introduction to the detection concepts
• Monitoring the pointing of the prototype LST-1 using star reconstruction in the Cherenkov camera
• Projected sensitivity of CTAO to axion-like particles from blazars with a machine learning approach
• Evaluation of the effective mirror area of CTA Small-Sized Telescopes for camera design and Monte Carlo simulation
• Development of a blue-mirror multilayer coating on light concentrators for future SiPM cameras