Absolute calibration and monitoring of a spectrometric channel using a photomultiplier

Very-high energy (VHE) gamma quanta contribute only a minuscule fraction - below one per million - to the flux of cosmic rays. Nevertheless, being neutral particles they are currently the best "messengers" of processes from the relativistic/ultra-relativistic Universe because they can be extrapolated back to their origin. The window of VHE gamma rays was opened only in 1989 by the Whipple collaboration, reporting the observation of TeV gamma rays from the Crab nebula. After a slow start, this new field of research is now rapidly expanding with the discovery of more than 150 VHE gamma-ray emitting sources. Progress is intimately related with the steady improvement of detectors and rapidly increasing computing power. We give an overview of the early attempts before and around 1989 and the progress after the pioneering work of the Whipple collaboration. The main focus of this article is on the development of experimental techniques for Earth-bound gamma-ray detectors; consequently, more emphasis is given to those experiments that made an initial breakthrough rather than to the successors which often had and have a similar (sometimes even higher) scientific output as the pioneering experiments. The considered energy threshold is about 30 GeV. At lower energies, observations can presently only be performed with balloon or satellite-borne detectors. Irrespective of the stormy experimental progress, the success story could not have been called a success story without a broad scientific output. Therefore we conclude this article with a summary of the scientific rationales and main results achieved over the last two decades.

Very-high energy gamma-ray astronomy: A 23-year success story in high-energy astroparticle physics

The techniques, the status and prospects of very high energy (VHE) gamma ray astronomy with ground based telescopes will be reviewed

Very high energy gamma ray astronomy

A new instrument, a camera obscura with a number of light apertures (or slits), is suggested for observation of EAS images in Cerenkov light. Its advantages (over mirror-imaging telescopes) are a low night-sky light noise, a wide field of view and absence of aberrations. This camera is effective for measurements of bright objects such as EAS of energies higher than 103 TeV. Analysis of EAS images in the 'knee' region of the primary cosmic-ray energy spectrum (E0 approximately=3*103 TeV) could give new information on the expected variation of cosmic-ray composition in this energy region.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0954-3899/20/12/013/pdf

Camera obscura for observation of EAS in Cerenkov light

Very high energy (VHE) gamma quanta contribute only to a minuscule fraction – below one per million – to the flux of cosmic rays. Nevertheless, being neutral particles they are currently the best “messengers” of processes from the relativistic/ultra-relativistic Universe because they can be extrapolated back to their origin. The window of VHE gamma rays was opened only in 1989 by the Whipple collaboration, reporting the observation of TeV gamma rays from the Crab nebula. After a slow start, this new field of research is now rapidly expanding with the discovery of more than 150 VHE gamma-ray emitting sources. Progress is intimately related with the steady improvement of detectors and rapidly increasing computing power. We give an overview of the early attempts before and around 1989 and the progress after the pioneering work of the Whipple collaboration. Before describing the important experiments that paved the way towards the current observations, a short review of gamma rays as cosmic messengers and the general concept of detecting and filtering them from the vast majority of charged cosmic rays will be given in the introduction. The main part of the chapter on VHE gamma-ray astronomy highlights the various experiments that have pushed the field to the current success. At the end, a short overview of the challenging physics questions will be given summarizing the goals of the experiments in order to give a coherent picture of the underlying reasons behind the experiments. In coherence with the energy range of cosmic rays observable from Earth, we will set the lower energy limit to about 30 GeV above which ground-based observations with the most powerful instruments are now possible. Below this energy range observations can only be performed with balloon or satellite-borne detectors. Their detection range is below the classical cosmic-ray energy range.

Very-High Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy: A 23-Year Success Story in Astroparticle Physics

We are presently building an array of angle integrating air Cherenkov counters for the study of VHE and UHE cosmic rays. The new array will be sensitive to extended air showers of energies > 5 × 1013 meV and of zenith angles up to 35°. The determination of the incident shower direction will be performed by fast timing measurements with an angular resolution of 0.5–5 mrad. The Cherenkov counters will allow us to obtain information on the shower energy and structure higher up in the atmosphere. The array will be combined with the existing HEGRA scintillation counter matrix on La Palma. The combination of the Cherenkov data and the data from the ground level scintillator matrix will provide a powerful tool for γ/hadron discrimination. We expect to achieve hadron rejection ratios of > 103 when adding the proposed muon detectors, thereby making possible the detection of the diffuse γ radiation presumed to be coming predominantly from the galactic plane.

A new air Cherenkov counter concept for the observation of extended air showers

Search for Steady and Sporadic Emission of Neutral Radiation Above 50 TeV with the HEGRA Array

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A new air Cherenkov counter concept for the observation of extended air showers

Search for Steady and Sporadic Emission of Neutral Radiation Above 50 TeV with the HEGRA Array