Design and performance of the prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope camera

Abstract

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next-generation ground-based observatory for very-high-energy gamma-ray astronomy. An innovative 9.7 m aperture, dual-mirror Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (SCT) design is a candidate design for CTA Medium-Sized Telescopes. A prototype SCT (pSCT) has been constructed at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Arizona, USA. Its camera is currently partially instrumented with 1600 pixels covering a field of view of 2.7 degrees square. The small plate scale of the optical system allows densely packed silicon photomultipliers to be used, which combined with high-density trigger and waveform readout electronics enable the high-resolution camera. The camera's electronics are capable of imaging air shower development at a rate of one billion samples per second. We describe the commissioning and performance of the pSCT camera, including trigger and waveform readout performance, calibration, and absolute GPS time stamping. We also present the upgrade to the camera, which is currently underway. The upgrade will fully populate the focal plane, increasing the field of view to 8 degree diameter, and lower the front-end electronics noise, enabling a lower trigger threshold and improved reconstruction and background rejection.

8 pages, 5 figures, Proceedings of the 37th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2021), Berlin, Germany

References in corpus (2)

• Monte Carlo studies for the optimisation of the Cherenkov Telescope Array layout
• Detection of the Crab Nebula with the 9.7 m Prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Development of a SiPM Pixel Prototype for the Large-Sized Telescope of the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• A study on Performance Boost of a 17~m class Cherenkov telescope with a SiPM-based camera
• CTC and CT5TEA: an advanced multi-channel digitizer and trigger ASIC for imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes
• The Camera and Readout for the Trinity Demonstrator and the EUSO-SPB2 Cherenkov Telescope
• Application of convolutional neural networks for extensive air shower separation in the SPHERE-3 experiment
• Prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope for the Cherenkov Telescope Array: Commissioning the Optical System