Simulation of imaging air shower Cherenkov telescopes as part of the TAIGA Project

• Main Authors: Kunnas, Maike Helena, Astapov, I., Gress, T., Grishin, O., Dyachok, A., Epimakhov, Sergey, Fedorov, O., Gafarov, A., Gorbunov, N., Grebenyuk, V., Grinuk, A., Horns, Dieter, Bezyazeekov, P., Ivanova, A., Kalinin, A., Karpov, N., Kalmykov, N., Kazarina, Y., Kirichkov, N., Kiryuhin, S., Kokoulin, R., Komponiest, K., Konstantinov, A., Bogdanov, A., Korosteleva, E., Kozhin, V., Kuzmichev, L., Lenok, V., Lubsandorzhiev, B., Lubsandorzhiev, N., Mirgazov, R., Mirzoyan, R., Monkhoev, R., Nachtigall, Rayk, Boreyko, V., Osipova, E., Pakhorukov, A., Panasyuk, M., Pankov, L., Petrukhin, A., Platonov, V., Poleschuk, V., Popova, E., Porelli, Andrea, Postnikov, E., Brückner, M., Prosin, V., Ptuskin, V., Rubtsov, G., Pushnin, A.
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: Verlag Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron 2016
• Subjects: taiga
• Online Access: https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/record/315087; https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/search?p=id:%22PUBDB-2016-05622%22

The Tunka Advanced International Gamma-ray and Cosmic ray Astrophysics (TAIGA) project aims at observation of cosmic rays beyond 100 TeV and gamma rays above 1 TeV via observation of the extensive air showers (EAS) caused in the atmosphere. Two common detection techniques are timing arrays and imaging air shower cherenkov telescopes (IACT). Timing arrays yield good directional and energy reconstruction, but provide only mediocre gamma-hadron-separation at their energy threshold. IACTs are good at separation, but since a stereoscopic view of a shower is needed for high reconstruction accuracy, it is difficult to achieve the large effective areas needed for ultra high energy observations. In this work we present the simulations performed to explore and optimize our IACT design and the first steps towards hybrid reconstruction.