Domenico della Volpe, Imen Al Samarai, Cyril Alispach, Tomasz Bulik, Jerzy Borkowski, Franck Cadoux, Victor Coco, Yannick Favre, Mira Grudzińska, Matthieu Heller, Marek Jamrozy, Jerzy Kasperek, Etienne Lyard, Emil Mach, Dusan Mandat, Jerzy Michałowski, Rafal Moderski, Teresa Montaruli, Andrii Neronov, Jacek Niemiec, T. R. Njoh Ekoume, Michal Ostrowski, Paweł Paśko, Miroslav Pech, Pawel Rajda, Jakub Rafalski, Petr Schovanek, Karol Seweryn, Krzysztof Skowron, Vitalii Sliusar, Łukasz Stawarz, Magdalena Stodulska, Marek Stodulski, Petr Travnicek, Isaac Troyano Pujadas, Roland Walter, Adam Zagdański, Krzysztof Zietara
KEYWORDS: Atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes, Telescopes, Cameras, Electronics, Mirrors, Atmospheric optics, Solar concentrators, Digital electronics, Signal processing, Field programmable gate arrays
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will explore with unprecedented precision the Universe in the gammaray domain covering an energy range from 50 GeV to more the 300 TeV. To cover such a broad range with a sensitivity which will be ten time better than actual instruments, different types of telescopes are needed: the Large Size Telescopes (LSTs), with a ∼24 m diameter mirror, a Medium Size Telescopes (MSTs), with a ∼12 m mirror and the small size telescopes (SSTs), with a ∼4 m diameter mirror. The single mirror small size telescope (SST-1M), one of the proposed solutions to become part of the small-size telescopes of CTA, will be equipped with an innovative camera. The SST-1M has a Davies-Cotton optical design with a mirror dish of 4 m diameter and focal ratio 1.4 focussing the Cherenkov light produced in atmospheric showers onto a 90 cm wide hexagonal camera providing a FoV of 9 degrees. The camera is an innovative design based on silicon photomultipliers (SiPM ) and adopting a fully digital trigger and readout architecture. The camera features 1296 custom designed large area hexagonal SiPM coupled to hollow optical concentrators to achieve a pixel size of almost 2.4 cm. The SiPM is a custom design developed with Hamamatsu and with its active area of almost 1 cm2 is one of the largest monolithic SiPM existing. Also the optical concentrators are innovative being light funnels made of a polycarbonate substrate coated with a custom designed UV-enhancing coating. The analog signals coming from the SiPM are fed into the fully digital readout electronics, where digital data are processed by high-speed FPGAs both for trigger and readout. The trigger logic, implemented into an Virtex 7 FPGA, uses the digital data to elaborate a trigger decision by matching data against predefined patterns. This approach is extremely flexible and allows improvements and continued evolutions of the system. The prototype camera is being tested in laboratory prior to its installation expected in fall 2017 on the telescope prototype in Krakow (Poland). In this contribution, we will describe the design of the camera and show the performance measured in laboratory.
J. Aguilar, W. Bilnik, J. Borkowski, F. Cadoux, A. Christov, D. della Volpe, Y. Favre, M. Heller, J. Kasperek, E. Lyard, A. Marszalek, R. Moderski, T. Montaruli, A. Porcelli, E. Prandini, P. Rajda, M. Rameez, E. jr. Schioppa, I. Troyano Pujadas, K. Ziętara, J. Blocki, L. Bogacz, T. Bulik, M. Curyło, M. Dyrda, A. Frankowski, Ł. Grudniki, M. Grudzinska, B. Idźkowski, M. Jamrozy, M. Janiak, K. Lalik, E. Mach, D. Mandat, J. Michalowski, A. Neronov, J. Niemiec, M. Ostrowski, P. Paśko, M. Pech, P. Schovanek, K. Seweryn, K. Skowron, V. Sliusar, M. Sowinski, Ł. Stawarz, M. Stodulska, M. Stodulski, S. Toscano, R. Walter, M. Więcek, A. Zagdański, P. Żychowski
The single mirror Small Size Telescope (SST-1M) project proposes a design among others for the smallest type of telescopes (SST), that will compose the south observatory of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). The SST camera collecting the Cherenkov light resulting from very high energy gamma-ray interactions in the atmosphere proposes to use Silicon PhotoMultipliers (SiPM). The SST-1M design has led to the use of unique pixel shape and size that required a dedicated development by the University of Geneva and Hamamatsu. An active surface of ~94 mm2 and a resulting total capacitance of ~3.4 nF combined with the stringent requirements of the CTA project on timing and charge resolution have led the University of Geneva to develop a custom preamplifier stage and slow-control system. The design and performance of the tailor made preamplifier stage and of the slow control electronics will be briefly described. The bias circuit of the sensor contains a resistor meant to prevent the sensor from drawing high current. However this resistor also introduces a voltage drop at the sensor input impacting the stability of its operation. A model has been developed in order to derive the parameters needed to account for it at the data analysis level. A solution based on the SST-1M front-end and digital readout is proposed to compensate for the voltage drop at the sensor cathode.
J. Aguilar, W. Bilnik, J. Borkowski, F. Cadoux, A. Christov, D. della Volpe, Y. Favre, M. Heller, J. Kasperek, E. Lyard, A. Marszałek, R. Moderski, T. Montaruli, A. Porcelli, E. Prandini, P. Rajda, M. Rameez, E.jr Schioppa, I. Troyano Pujadas, K. Ziętara, J. Blocki, L. Bogacz, T. Bulik, A. Frankowski, M. Grudzinska, B. Idźkowski, M. Jamrozy, M. Janiak, K. Lalik, E. Mach, D. Mandat, J. Michałowski, A. Neronov, J. Niemiec, M. Ostrowski, P. Paśko, M. Pech, P. Schovanek, K. Seweryn, K. Skowron, V. Sliusar, L. Stawarz, M. Stodulska, M. Stodulski, S. Toscano, R. Walter, M. Wiȩcek, A. Zagdański
The Small Size Telescope with Single Mirror (SST-1M) is one of the proposed types of Small Size Telescopes (SST) for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). The CTA south array will be composed of about 100 telescopes, out of which about 70 are of SST class, which are optimized for the detection of gamma rays in the energy range from 5 TeV to 300 TeV. The SST-1M implements a Davies-Cotton optics with a 4 m dish diameter with a field of view of 9°. The Cherenkov light produced in atmospheric showers is focused onto a 88 cm wide hexagonal photo-detection plane, composed of 1296 custom designed large area hexagonal silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) and a fully digital readout and trigger system. The SST-1M camera has been designed to provide high performance in a robust as well as compact and lightweight design. In this contribution, we review the different steps that led to the realization of the telescope prototype and its innovative camera.
J. Aguilar, W. Bilnik, L. Bogacz, T. Bulik, A. Christov, D. della Volpe, M. Dyrda, A. Frankowski, M. Grudzinska, J. Grygorczuk, M. Heller, B. Idźkowski, M. Janiak, M. Jamrozy, M. Karczewski, J. Kasperek, E. Lyard, A. Marszałek, J. Michałowski, R. Moderski, T. Montaruli, A. Neronov, J. Nicolau-Kukliński, J. Niemiec, M. Ostrowski, P. Paśko, Ł. Płatos, E. Prandini, R. Pruchniewicz, J. Rafalski, P. Rajda, M. Rameez, M. Rataj, M. Rupiński, K. Rutkowski, K. Seweryn, M. Sidz, Ł. Stawarz, M. Stodulska, M. Stodulski, M. Tokarz, S. Toscano, I. Troyano Pujadas, R. Walter, P. Wawer, R. Wawrzaszek, L. Wiśniewski, K. Ziętara, P. Ziółkowski, P. Żychowski
The single mirror Small Size Telescopes (SST-1M), being built by a sub-consortium of Polish and Swiss Institutions of
the CTA Consortium, will be equipped with a fully digital camera with a compact photodetector plane based on silicon
photomultipliers. The internal trigger signal transmission overhead will be kept at low level by introducing a high level
of integration. It will be achieved by massively deploying state-of-the-art multi-gigabit transceivers, beginning from the
ADC flash converters, through the internal data and trigger signals transmission over backplanes and cables, to the
camera’s server 10Gb/s Ethernet links. Such approach will allow fitting the size and weight of the camera exactly to the
SST-1M needs, still retaining the flexibility of a fully digital design. Such solution has low power consumption, high
reliability and long lifetime. The concept of the camera will be described, along with some construction details and
performance results.
R. Moderski, J. Aguilar, W. Bilnik, L. Bogacz, T. Bulik, A. Christov, D. della Volpe, M. Dyrda, A. Frankowski, M. Grudzińska, J. Grygorczuk, M. Heller, B. Idźkowski, M. Janiak, M. Jamrozy, M. Karczewski, J. Kasperek, E. Lyard, A. Marszałek, J. Michałowski, R. Mohamed, T. Montaruli, A. Neronov, J. Nicolau-Kukliński, J. Niemiec, M. Ostrowski, P. Paśko, Ł. Płatos, E. Prandini, R. Pruchniewicz, J. Rafalski, P. Rajda, M. Rataj, M. Rupiński, K. Rutkowski, K. Seweryn, M. Sidz, L. Stawarz, M. Stodulska, M. Stodulski, M. Tokarz, S. Toscano, I. Troyano Pujadas, R. Walter, P. Wawer, R. Wawrzaszek, L. Wiśniewski, K. Ziętara, P. Ziółkowski, P. Żychowski
The southern part of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) observatory will consist of at least three types of telescopes: large size, medium size and small size telescopes. Massive Monte Carlo simulations have been performed using the European Grid Infrastructure to analyze the performance of this array. We present the results of these simulations for a sub-array of small size telescopes of the Davies-Cotton type. Such a telescope, called SST-1M, is currently being proposed for the CTA observatory by a group of Polish and Swiss institutions. SST-1M will have a mirror of 4m diameter and it will be equipped with a fully digital camera based on silicon photodetectors. We present the analysis of the sub-array sensitivity, angular resolution, and energy resolution to demonstrate the fulfillment of the requirements of the CTA Consortium. To verify the results obtained in numerical simulations a construction of a mini array of five SST-1M telescopes is planned. We also present the performance of such a mini array and discuss the prospects of its scientific program.
J. Aguilar, W. Bilnik, L. Bogacz, T. Bulik, A. Christov, D. della Volpe, M. Dyrda, A. Frankowski, M. Grudzińska, J. Grygorczuk, M. Heller, B. Idźkowski, M. Janiak, M. Jamrozy, M. Karczewski, J. Kasperek, E. Lyard, A. Marszalek, J. Michalowski, M. Rameez, R. Moderski, T. Montaruli, A. Neronov, J. Nicolau-Kukliński, J. Niemiec, M. Ostrowski, P. Paśko, Ł. Płatos, E. Prandini, J. Rafalski, P. Rajda, M. Rataj, M. Rupiński, K. Rutkowskai, K. Seweryn, M. Sidz, Ł. Stawarz, M. Stodulska, M. Stodulski, M. Tokarz, S. Toscano, I. Troyano Pujadas, R. Walter, P. Wawer, R. Wawrzaszek, L. Wiśniewski, K. Winiarski, K. Ziętara, P. Ziółkowski, P. Źychowski
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), the next generation very high energy gamma-ray observatory, will consist of three types of telescopes: large (LST), medium (MST) and small (SST) size telescopes. The small size telescopes are dedicated to the observation of gamma-rays with energy between a few TeV and few hundreds of TeV. The single-mirror small size telescope (SST-1M) is one of several SST designs. It will be equipped with a 4 m-diameter segmented mirror dish and a fully digital camera based on Geiger-mode avalanche photodiodes. Currently, the first prototype of the mechanical structure is under assembly in Poland. In 2014 it will be equipped with 18 mirror facets and a prototype of the camera.
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