The technical performance of the HEGRA IACT system

Le résumé fourni par la source

Between the beginning of 1997 and fall 2002, the HEGRA collaboration was operating a stereoscopic system of 4 (later 5) Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACT) on the Canary Island La Palma. We review the calibration schemes which were developed for the system, and report on the performance of the detector over this period. The system had an energy threshold of 500 GeV under optimum detector conditions at zenith. With the calibration schemes described here, a systematic accuracy of 15 percent on the absolute energy scale has been achieved. The continuous sensitivity monitoring provides a relative accuracy of a few percent, and shows that the threshold did not exceed 600 GeV throughout the whole period of operation. The readout electronics and the imaging quality of the dishes were well monitored and stable. The absolute pointing had an accuracy of better than 25 �� .

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.