This paper presents Taylor expansions for the imaging and timing characteristics of spherical optical systems with infinitesimal mirror facets, sometimes referred to as “modified Davies–Cotton” ...telescopes. Such a system comprises a discontinuous spherical mirror surface whose curvature radius is different from its focal length, and whose mirrors are aligned to suppress spherical aberration. Configurations that range between two “optima” are, one of which minimises tangential comatic aberration and the other that minimises timing dispersion.
The analysis of ring images produced by muons in an Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope (IACT) provides a powerful and precise method to calibrate the IACT optical throughput and monitor its ...optical point-spread function (PSF). First proposed by the Whipple Collaboration in the early 1990s, this method has been refined by the so-called second generation of IACT experiments: H.E.S.S., MAGIC, and VERITAS. We review here the progress made with these instruments and investigate the applicability of the method as the primary throughput calibration method for the different telescope types forming the future Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). We find several additional systematic effects not yet taken into account by previous authors and propose several new analytical methods to include these in the analysis. Slight modifications in hardware and analysis need to be made to ensure that such a calibration works as accurately as required for the CTA. We derive analytic estimates for the expected muon data rates for optical throughput calibration, camera pixel flat-fielding, and monitoring of the optical PSF. The achievable statistical and systematic uncertainties of the method are also assessed.
Abstract Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are particle acceleration sites that can emit photons in the very high-energy (VHE) domain through nonthermal processes. From 2004 until 2018, the current generation ...of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) did not detect any GRB in the VHE domain. However, from 2018 to 2020, five detections were reported. In this work, we try to solve the case of the missing VHE GBRs prior to 2018. We aim to identify GRBs that might have eluded VHE detection in past years by the H.E.S.S., MAGIC, and VERITAS IACTs. To do so, we study GRBs with known redshift detected by Swift from 2004 until June 2022. We first identify all GRBs that could have been observed by these IACTs since 2004, considering observation conditions and visibility constraints. We assume a relation between the X-rays and the VHE gamma rays based on the VHE GRBs detected to date and combine this with the redshift measurements, instrument response information, and observation conditions to predict the observed VHE gamma-ray flux from the Swift X-Ray Telescope measurements. We report findings on 12 bright low-redshift GRBs that we identify as most likely to have been detected in the VHE domain by current IACTs. The rate of IACT-detectable GRBs with ideal observation conditions is <1 VHE GRB per year with the current configuration. With its lower energy threshold and higher sensitivity, this rate increases to ∼4 VHE GRBs per year with the Cherenkov Telescope Array.
The light emitted by stars and accreting compact objects through the history of the universe is encoded in the intensity of the extragalactic background light (EBL). Knowledge of the EBL is important ...to understand the nature of star formation and galaxy evolution, but direct measurements of the EBL are limited by galactic and other foreground emissions. Here, we report an absorption feature seen in the combined spectra of a sample of gamma-ray blazars out to a redshift of z ~1.6. This feature is caused by attenuation of gamma rays by the EBL at optical to ultraviolet frequencies and allowed us to measure the EBL flux density in this frequency band.
The origin of Galactic cosmic rays is a century-long puzzle. Indirect evidence points to their acceleration by supernova Shockwaves, but we know little of their escape from the shock and their ...evolution through the turbulent medium surrounding massive stars. Gamma rays can probe their spreading through the ambient gas and radiation fields. The Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) has observed the star-forming region of Cygnus X. The 1-to 100-gigaelectronvolt images reveal a 50-parsec-wide cocoon of freshly accelerated cosmic rays that flood the cavities carved by the stellar winds and ionization fronts from young stellar clusters. It provides an example to study the youth of cosmic rays in a superbubble environment before they merge into the older Galactic population.
We update the list of GeV-TeV extragalactic γ-ray sources using the two-year catalog from the Fermi Large-Area Telescope (LAT) and recent results from ground-based γ-ray telescopes. Breaks in the ...spectra between the high-energy (100 MeV < E < 300 GeV) and the very high-energy (E > 200 GeV) ranges, as well as their dependence on distance, are discussed in the context of absorption on the extragalactic background light (EBL). We calculate the size of the expected break using a model for the EBL and compare it to the data, taking into account systematic uncertainties in the measurements. We develop a novel Bayesian model to describe this dataset and use it to constrain two simple models for the EBL-induced breaks.
The Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard the Fermi spacecraft routinely observes high-energy emission from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Here we present the second catalog of LAT-detected GRBs, covering the ...first 10 yr of operations, from 2008 to 2018 August 4. A total of 186 GRBs are found; of these, 91 show emission in the range 30-100 MeV (17 of which are seen only in this band) and 169 are detected above 100 MeV. Most of these sources were discovered by other instruments (Fermi/GBM, Swift/BAT, AGILE, INTEGRAL) or reported by the Interplanetary Network (IPN); the LAT has independently triggered on four GRBs. This catalog presents the results for all 186 GRBs. We study onset, duration, and temporal properties of each GRB, as well as spectral characteristics in the 100 MeV-100 GeV energy range. Particular attention is given to the photons with the highest energy. Compared with the first LAT GRB catalog, our rate of detection is significantly improved. The results generally confirm the main findings of the first catalog: the LAT primarily detects the brightest GBM bursts, and the high-energy emission shows delayed onset as well as longer duration. However, in this work we find delays exceeding 1 ks and several GRBs with durations over 10 ks. Furthermore, the larger number of LAT detections shows that these GRBs not only cover the high-fluence range of GBM-detected GRBs but also sample lower fluences. In addition, the greater number of detected GRBs with redshift estimates allows us to study their properties in both the observer and rest frames. Comparison of the observational results with theoretical predictions reveals that no model is currently able to explain all results, highlighting the role of LAT observations in driving theoretical models.
In this paper, we report on the two-year-long Fermi-Large Area Telescope observation of the peculiar blazar 4C +21.35 (PKS 1222+216). This source was in a quiescent state from the start of the ...science operations of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in 2008 August until 2009 September, and then became more active, with gradually increasing flux and some moderately bright flares. In 2010 April and June, 4C +21.35 underwent a very strong GeV outburst composed of several major flares characterized by rise and decay timescales of the order of a day. During the outburst, the GeV spectra of 4C +21.35 displayed a broken power-law form with spectral breaks observed near 1-3 GeV photon energies. We demonstrate that, at least during the major flares, the jet in 4C +21.35 carried a total kinetic luminosity comparable to the total accretion power available to feed the outflow. We also discuss the origin of the break observed in the flaring spectra of 4C +21.35. We show that, in principle, a model involving annihilation of the GeV photons on the He II Lyman recombination continuum and line emission of "broad-line region" clouds may account for such. However, we also discuss the additional constraint provided by the detection of 4C +21.35 at 0.07-0.4 TeV energies by the MAGIC telescope, which coincided with one of the GeV flares of the source. We argue that there are reasons to believe that the lsim TeV emission of 4C +21.35 (as well as the GeV emission of the source, if co-spatial) is not likely to be produced inside the broad-line region zone of highest ionization (~1017 cm from the nucleus), but instead originates further away from the active center, namely, around the characteristic scale of the hot dusty torus surrounding the 4C +21.35 nucleus (~1019 cm).
The region around the Galactic Center (GC) is now well established to be brighter at energies of a few GeV than what is expected from conventional models of diffuse gamma-ray emission and catalogs of ...known gamma-ray sources. We study the GeV excess using 6.5 yr of data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope. We characterize the uncertainty of the GC excess spectrum and morphology due to uncertainties in cosmic-ray source distributions and propagation, uncertainties in the distribution of interstellar gas in the Milky Way, and uncertainties due to a potential contribution from the Fermi bubbles. We also evaluate uncertainties in the excess properties due to resolved point sources of gamma rays. The GC is of particular interest, as it would be expected to have the brightest signal from annihilation of weakly interacting massive dark matter (DM) particles. However, control regions along the Galactic plane, where a DM signal is not expected, show excesses of similar amplitude relative to the local background. Based on the magnitude of the systematic uncertainties, we conservatively report upper limits for the annihilation cross-section as a function of particle mass and annihilation channel.
We present a catalog of sources detected above 10 GeV by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) in the first 7 years of data using the Pass 8 event-level analysis. This is the Third Catalog of Hard ...Fermi-LAT Sources (3FHL), containing 1556 objects characterized in the 10 GeV-2 TeV energy range. The sensitivity and angular resolution are improved by factors of 3 and 2 relative to the previous LAT catalog at the same energies (1FHL). The vast majority of detected sources (79%) are associated with extragalactic counterparts at other wavelengths, including 16 sources located at very high redshift (z > 2). Of the sources, 8% have Galactic counterparts and 13% are unassociated (or associated with a source of unknown nature). The high-latitude sky and the Galactic plane are observed with a flux sensitivity of 4.4 to 9.5 × 10−11 ph cm−2 s−1, respectively (this is approximately 0.5% and 1% of the Crab Nebula flux above 10 GeV). The catalog includes 214 new γ-ray sources. The substantial increase in the number of photons (more than 4 times relative to 1FHL and 10 times to 2FHL) also allows us to measure significant spectral curvature for 32 sources and find flux variability for 163 of them. Furthermore, we estimate that for the same flux limit of 10−12 erg cm−2 s−1, the energy range above 10 GeV has twice as many sources as the range above 50 GeV, highlighting the importance, for future Cherenkov telescopes, of lowering the energy threshold as much as possible.
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