\documentclass{icrc} \usepackage{times} \usepackage{graphicx} % when using Latex and dvips % % (the latter best with option -Pcmz, if available, % % to invoke Type 1 cm fonts) %\usepackage[pdftex]{graphicx} % when using pdfLatex (preferred) \begin{document} \title{Detailed Monte Carlo studies for the MAGIC telescope} \author[1]{O. Blanch} \affil[1]{IFAE, Barcelona, Spain} \author[2]{J.C. Gonzalez} \affil[2]{Universidad Complutense Madrid, Spain} \author[3]{H. Kornmayer} \affil[3]{Max-Planck-Institut f\"ur Physik, M\"unchen, Germany} \correspondence{H. Kornmayer (h.kornmayer@web.de)} \firstpage{1} \pubyear{2001} % \titleheight{11cm} % uncomment and adjust in case your title block % does not fit into the default and minimum 7.5 cm \maketitle \begin{abstract} For the understanding of a large Cherenkov telescope a detailed simulation of air showers and of the detector response are unavoidable. Such a simulation must take into account the development of air showers in the atmosphere, the reflectivity of the mirrors, the response of photo detectors and the influence of both the light of night sky and the light of bright stars. A detailed study will be presented. \end{abstract} \section{Introduction} In this year the construction of the the $17~\mathrm{m}$ diameter Che\-ren\-kov telescope called MAGIC \cite{mc98} will be finished. The aim of this detector is the observation of $\gamma$-ray sources in the enery region above $\approx 10~\mathrm{TeV}$. The size of the telesope mirros will be around $250~\mathrm{m^2}$. The air showers induced by cosmic ray particles (hadrons and gammas) will be detected with a "classical" camera consisting of 577 photomultiplier tubes (PMT). The analog signals of these PMTs will be recorded by a FADC system running with a frequency of $f = 333~\mathrm{MHz}$. The readout of the FADCs by a dedicated trigger system containing different trigger levels. The goal of the trigger system is to reject the hadronic cosmic ray background from the gamma rays, for which a lower threshold is aimed. For a better understanding of the MAGIC telescope and its different systems (trigger, FADC) a detailed Monte Carlo (MC) study is unavoidable. Such an study has to take into account the simulation of air showers, the effect of absorption in the atmosphere, the behaviour of the PMTs and the response of the trigger and FADC system. For a big telescope like MAGIC there is an additional source of noise, which is the light of the night sky. As a rude assumption there will be around 50 stars with magnitude $m \le 9$ in the field of view of the camera. So one other game of this study is to invent methods to become rid of the light from stars. Here we present the first results of such an investigation. \section{Generation of MC data samples} The simulation of the MAGIC telescope is seperated in a subsequent chain of smaller simulation parts. First the air showers are simulated with the CORSIKA program \citep{hk95}. In the next step we simulate the reflection of the Cherenkov photons on the mirror dish. Then the behaviour of the PMTs is simulated and the response of the trigger and FADC system is generated. In the followin subsections you find a more precise description of all the programs. \subsection{Air shower simulation} The simulation of gammas and of hadrons is done with the CORSIKA program, version 5.20. For the simulation of hadronic showers we use the VENUS model. We simulate showers for different zenith angles ($\Theta = 0^\circ, 5^\circ, 10^\circ, 15^\circ, 20^\circ, 25^\circ $). Gammas where simulated like a point source whereas the hadrons are simulated isotropic around the given zenith angle. We found that hadronic showers have also for big impact parameters $I$ a non-zero probability to trigger the telescope. Therefore we simulate hadrons with $I < 400~\mathrm{m}$ and gammas with $I < 200~\mathrm{m}$. The number of generated showers can be found in table \ref{tab_showers}. % % % \begin{table}[b] \begin{center} \begin{tabular}{|c||r|r||} \hline zenith angle & gammas & protons \\ \hline \hline $\Theta = 0^\circ$ & $\approx 5 \cdot 10^5$ & $\approx 5 \cdot 10^5$ \\ $\Theta = 5^\circ$ & $\approx 5 \cdot 10^5$ & $\approx 5 \cdot 10^5$ \\ $\Theta = 10^\circ$ & $\approx 5 \cdot 10^5$ & $\approx 5 \cdot 10^5$ \\ $\Theta = 15^\circ$ & $\approx 2 \cdot 10^6$ & $\approx 5 \cdot 10^6$ \\ $\Theta = 20^\circ$ & production & production \\ $\Theta = 25^\circ$ & production & production \\ \hline \end{tabular} \end{center} \caption {Number of generated showers} \label{tab_showers} \end{table} % % % For each simulated shower all Cherenkov photons hitting the groud at observation level close to the telesope position are stored. \subsection{mirror simulation} The output of the air shower simualition is used as the input to the mirror simulation. But before simulating the mirror themself, one has to take the absorption in the atmosphere into account. For each Cherenkov photon the height of production and the wavelength is known. Taking the Rayleigh and Mie scattering into account one is able to calculate the effect of absorption in the atmosphere. The next step in the simulation is the reflection of the Cherenkov photons on the mirrors. Therefore one has to define in that step the pointing of the telescope. Each photon hitting one of the mirrors will be tracked to the camera plane. Here we take an reflectivity of around 90\% into account. All Cherenkov photons reaching the camera plane will be stored. \subsection{camera simulation} The camera simulates the behaviour of the PMTs and the electronics of the trigger and FADC system. After the pixelisation we take the wavelength dependent quantum efficiency (QE) for each PMT into account. In figure \ref{fig_qe} the QE of a typical MAGIC PMT is shown. % % % \begin{figure}[hb] \vspace*{2.0mm} % just in case for shifting the figure slightly down \includegraphics[width=8.3cm]{qe_123.eps} % .eps for Latex, % pdfLatex allows .pdf, .jpg, .png and .tif \caption{quantum efficency of the PMT for pixel 123} \label{fig_qe} \end{figure} % % % For each photo electron (PE) leaving the photo cathod we generate a "standard" response function that we add to the analog signal of that PMT - seperatly for the trigger and the FADC system. At the present these response function are gaussians with a given width. The amplitude of the response function is randomized by using the function of figure \ref{fig_ampl}. By superimpose all photons of one pixel an by taking the arrival time into account we get the response of the trigger and FADC system for that pixel (see also figure \ref{fig_starresp}). This is done for all pixels in the camera. Then the simulation of the trigger electronic is applied. We look in the generated analog signal if the discriminator threshold is achieved. If yes we will create a digital output signal for that pixels. Then we decided if a first level trigger occurs by looking for next neighbour (NN)conditions at a given time. If a given NN condition (Multiplicity, Topology, ...) is fullfilled, a first level trigger is generated and the content of the FADC system is written to disk. An triggered event is generated. % % % \begin{figure}[t] \vspace*{2.0mm} % just in case for shifting the figure slightly down \includegraphics[width=8.3cm]{ampldist.eps} % .eps for Latex, % pdfLatex allows .pdf, .jpg, .png and .tif \caption{The distibution of amplitude of the standard response function.} \label{fig_ampl} \end{figure} % % % \subsection{starlight simulation} Due to the big mirror surface the light from the stars around the position of an expected gamma ray source is contributing to the noise in the camera. We developed a program that allows use to simulate the star light together with the generated shower. This program takes all stars in the field of view of the camera around chosen sky region. The light of these stars is track up to the camera taking the frequency of the light into account. After simulating the response of the photo cathode, we get the number of emitted photo electrons per pixel and time. These number is used to generate a noise signal for all the pixels. In figure \ref{fig_starresp} the response of the trigger and the FADC system can be seen for one pixel with a star of magnitude $m = 7$. These stars are typical, because there will be always one $7^m$ star in the trigger area of the camera. % % % \begin{figure}[h] \vspace*{2.0mm} % just in case for shifting the figure slightly down \includegraphics[width=8.3cm]{signal.eps} % .eps for Latex, % pdfLatex allows .pdf, .jpg, .png and .tif \caption{The response of a pixel due to a star with magnitude $m=7$ in the field of view. On the left plot the response of the trigger system is plotted while on the right plot the content in the FADC system is shown.} \label{fig_starresp} \end{figure} % % % \section{Results} \subsection{Trigger studies} The MC data produced are used to calculate some important parameter of the MAGIC telescope on the level of the trigger system. The trigger system build up will consist of different trigger levels. The discriminator of each channel is called the zero-level-trigger. For a given signal each discriminator will produce a digital output signal of a given length. So the important parameters of such an system are the threshold of each discriminator and the length of the digital output. The first-level-trigger is looking in the digital output of the 271 pixels of the trigger system for next neighbor (NN) conditions. The adjustable settings on the first-level-trigger are the mulitiplicity, the topology and the minimum required overlapping time. The second-level-trigger of the MAGIC telescope will be a pattern-recognition method. This part is still in the design phase. All results presented here are based on studies of the first-level-trigger. \subsubsection{Collection area} The trigger collection area is defined as the integral \begin{equation} A(E,\Theta) = \int_{F}{ T(E,\Theta,F) dF} \end{equation} where T is the trigger probablity. F is perpendicular to the shower axis. The results for different zenith angle $\Theta$ and for different trigger settings are shown in figure \ref{fig_collarea}. % % % \begin{figure}[h] \vspace*{2.0mm} % just in case for shifting the figure slightly down \includegraphics[width=8.3cm]{collarea.eps} % .eps for Latex, % pdfLatex allows .pdf, .jpg, .png and .tif \caption{The trigger collection area for gamma showers as a function of energy $E$.} \label{fig_collarea} \end{figure} % % % As bigger the zenith angle the smaller becomes the collection area for lower energies. \subsubsection{Threshold of MAGIC telescope} The threshold of the MAGIC telesope is defined as the peak in the $dN/dE$ distribution. For all different trigger settings this value is determined. \subsubsection{Expected rates} Using the monte carlo data sample, it is possible to estimate the expected rates from \section{Conclusion} \begin{acknowledgements} The authors thanks all the members of the MAGIC collaboration for their support in production of the big amount of simulated data. \end{acknowledgements} %\appendix % %\section{Appendix section 1} % %Text in appendix. % \begin{thebibliography}{99} \bibitem[(MAGIC Collaboration 1998)]{mc98} MAGIC Collaboration, "The MAGIC Telescope, Design Study for the Construction of a 17m Cherenkov Telescope for Gamma Astronomy Above 10 GeV", Preprint MPI-PhE?18-5, March 1998. \bibitem[Heck and Knapp(1995)]{hk95} Heck, D. and Knapp J., CORSIKA Manual, 1995. \bibitem[Abramovitz and Stegun(1964)]{as64} Abramowitz, M. and Stegun, I. A., Handbook of Mathematical Functions, U. S. Govt. Printing Office, Washington D. C., 1964. \bibitem[Aref(1983)]{a83} Aref, H., Integrable, chaotic, and turbulent vortex motion in two-dimensional flows, Ann. Rev. Fluid Mech., 15, 345--389, 1983. \end{thebibliography} \end{document}