A NECTAr-based upgrade for the Cherenkov cameras of the H.E.S.S. 12-meter telescopes
Terry Ashton, Michael Backes, Arnim Balzer, David Berge, Julien Bolmont, Simon Bonnefoy, Francois Brun, Thomas Chaminade, Eric Delagnes, Gerard Fontaine, Matthi… 展开作者
Terry Ashton, Michael Backes, Arnim Balzer, David Berge, Julien Bolmont, Simon Bonnefoy, Francois Brun, Thomas Chaminade, Eric Delagnes, Gerard Fontaine, Matthias Füßling, Gianluca Giavitto, Berrie Giebels, Jean-Francois Glicenstein, Tobias Gräber, Jim Hinton, Albert Jahnke, Stefan Klepser, Marko Kossatz, Axel Kretzschmann, Valentin Lefranc, Holger Leich, Jean-Philippe Lenain, Hartmut Lüdecke, Iryna Lypova, Pascal Manigot, Vincent Marandon, Emmanuel Moulin, Thomas Murach, Mathieu de Naurois, Patrick Nayman, Stefan Ohm, Marek Penno, Duncan Ross, David Salek, Markus Schade, Thomas Schwab, Kleopas Shiningayamwe, Christian Stegmann, Constantin Steppa, Jean-Paul Tavernet, Julian Thornhill, Francois Toussnel, Pascal Vincent
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35 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in "Astroparticle physics"
The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) is one of the three arrays of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) currently in operation. It is composed of four 12-meter telescopes and a 28-meter one, and is sensitive to gamma rays in the energy range ~30 GeV - 100 TeV. The cameras of the 12-m telescopes recently underwent a substantial upgrade, with the goal of improving their performance and robustness. The upgrade involved replacing all camera components except for the photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). This meant developing new hardware for the trigger, readout, power, cooling and mechanical systems, and new software for camera control and data acquisition. Several novel technologies were employed in the cameras: the readout is built around the new NECTAr digitizer chip, developed for the next generation of IACTs; the camera electronics is fully controlled and read out via Ethernet using a combination of FPGA and embedded ARM computers; the software uses modern libraries such as Apache Thrift, ZMQ and Protocol buffers. This work describes in detail the design and the performance of the upgraded cameras.
NectarCAM is a camera developed to detect Cherenkov light between 80 GeV and 30 TeV. It will equip the medium-sized telescopes (MST) of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO). The camera comprises 265 modules, covering a field of view of 8 degrees. Each module consists of 7 photomultiplier Tubes (PMTs) equipped with light guides and a front-end board performing the data capture. NectarCAM is based on the NECTAr chip, which combines a switch capacitor array sampling at 1GHz and a 12-bit Analog to Digital Converter (ADC). The NectarCAM camera is currently under integration in CEA Paris…
NectarCAM is a camera proposed for the medium-sized telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) which covers the core energy range of ~100 GeV to ~30 TeV. It has a modular design and is based on the NECTAr chip, at the heart of which is a GHz sampling Switched Capacitor Array and 12-bit Analog to Digital converter. The camera will be equipped with 265 7-photomultiplier modules, covering a field of view of 8 degrees. Each module includes photomultiplier bases, high voltage supply, pre-amplifier, trigger, readout and Ethernet transceiver. The recorded events last between a few nanoseconds …
The NectarCAM is a camera proposed for the medium-sized telescopes in the framework of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), the next-generation observatory for very-high-energy gamma-ray astronomy. The cameras are designed to operate in an open environment and their mechanics must provide protection for all their components under the conditions defined for the CTA observatory. In order to operate in a stable environment and ensure the best physics performance, each NectarCAM will be enclosed in a slightly overpressurized, nearly air-tight, camera body, to prevent dust and water from entering. …
In this work, we describe the optical properties of the single photoelectron (SPE) calibration system designed for NectarCAM, a camera proposed for the Medium Sized Telescopes (MST) of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). One of the goals of the SPE system, as integral part of the NectarCAM camera, consists in measuring with high accuracy the gain of its photo-detection chain. The SPE system is based on a white painted screen where light pulses are injected through a fishtail light guide from a dedicated flasher. The screen - placed 15 mm away from the focal plane - is mounted on an XY motoriz…
In the framework of the next generation of Cherenkov telescopes, the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), NectarCAM is a camera designed for the medium size telescopes covering the central energy range of 100 GeV to 30 TeV. NectarCAM will be finely pixelated (~ 1800 pixels for a 8 degree field of view, FoV) in order to image atmospheric Cherenkov showers by measuring the charge deposited within a few nanoseconds time-window. It will have additional features like the capacity to record the full waveform with GHz sampling for every pixel and to measure event times with nanosecond accuracy. An array …
NectarCAM is a camera proposed for the medium-sized telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) covering the central energy range of ~100 GeV to ~30 TeV. It has a modular design and is based on the NECTAr chip, at the heart of which is a GHz sampling Switched Capacitor Array and a 12-bit Analog to Digital converter. The camera will be equipped with 265 7-photomultiplier modules, covering a field of view of 8 degrees. Each module includes the photomultiplier bases, high voltage supply, pre-amplifier, trigger, readout and Ethernet transceiver. The recorded events last between a few nanosec…
NectarCAM is a camera for the medium-sized telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), which covers the energy range of 100 GeV to 30 TeV. The camera is equipped with 265 focal plane modules (FPMs). Each FPM comprises 7 pixels, each consisting of a photo-multiplier tube, a preamplifier, an independently controlled power supply, and a common control system. We developed a dedicated test bench to validate and qualify the industrial FPM production and to measure the performance of each FPM in a dark room before its integration in the camera. We report the measured performance of 61 FPM pro…
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be the first ground-based observatory for gamma-ray astronomy. With more than a hundred of 4th generation of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) distributed in two large arrays, CTA will reach unprecedented sensitivity, angular resolution, and spectral coverage. Three classes of IACTs -- 40 Medium-Sized Telescopes (MSTs), 8 Large-Sized Telescopes (LSTs) and 70 Small-Sized Telescopes (SSTs) -- are required to cover the full CTA energy range (20 GeV to 300 TeV). NectarCAM is a Cherenkov camera which is designed to equip medium sized telescope…
The VERITAS Cherenkov telescope array has been fully operational since Fall 2007 and has fulfilled or outperformed its design specifications. We are preparing an upgrade program with the goal to lower the energy threshold and improve the sensitivity of VERITAS at all accessible energies. In the baseline program of the upgrade we will relocate one of the four telescopes, replace the photo-sensors by higher efficiency photomultipliers and install a new trigger system. In the enhanced program of the upgrade we foresee, in addition, the construction of a fifth telescope and installation of an acti…
The upcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) ground-based gamma-ray observatory will open up our view of the very high energy Universe, offering an improvement in sensitivity of 5-10 times that of previous experiments. NectarCAM is one of the proposed cameras for the Medium-Sized Telescopes (MST) which have been designed to cover the core energy range of CTA, from 100 GeV to 10 TeV. The final camera will be capable of GHz sampling and provide a field of view of 8 degrees with its 265 modules of 7 photomultiplier each (for a total of 1855 pixels). In order to validate the performance of NectarC…
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the planned next-generation instrument for ground-based gamma-ray astronomy, covering a photon energy range of ~20 GeV to above 100 TeV. CTA will consist of the order of 100 telescopes of three sizes, installed at two sites in the Northern and Southern Hemisphere. This contribution deals with the 12 meter Medium Size Telescopes (MST) having a single mirror (modified Davies-Cotton, DC) design. In the baseline design of the CTA arrays, 25 MSTs in the South and 15 MSTs in the North provide the necessary sensitivity for CTA in the core energy range of 100 GeV…
This contribution aims to introduce the single photo-electron system designed to calibrate the camera of the Medium-Sized Telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). This system will allow us to measure accurately the gain of the camera's photodetection chain and to constrain the systematic uncertainties on the energy reconstruction of gamma rays detected by CTA. The system consists of a white painted screen, a fishtail light guide, a flasher and an XY motorization to allow movement. The flashes guided by the fishtail mimic the Cherenkov radiation and illuminate the focal plane under th…
The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) is an array of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) located in the Khomas Highland in Namibia. It consists of four 12-m telescopes (CT1-4), which started operations in 2003, and a 28-m diameter one (CT5), which was brought online in 2012. It is the only IACT system featuring telescopes of different sizes, which provides sensitivity for gamma rays across a very wide energy range, from ~30 GeV up to ~100 TeV. Since the camera electronics of CT1-4 are much older than the one of CT5, an upgrade is being carried out; first deployment was in…
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) high-energy γ-ray observatory was completed in march 2015 in central Mexico. The detector, consisting of 300 water tanks, is currently being upgraded to improve its performance at Multi-TeV energies, with a sparse array of small water Cherenkov tanks. It will extend the instrumental area by a factor of 4, and enhance the sensitivity at the highest energies. In this contribution, the current status of the observatory is presented, as well as the coming upgrade. The electronics and the readout system for the new sparse array of small water tanks are also …
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) gamma-ray observatory has been fully operational since March 2015. To improve its sensitivity at the highest energies, it is being upgraded with an additional sparse array called outrigger array. We will discuss in this contribution, the different outrigger array components, and the simulation results to optimize it.
The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) is an array of five imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes in Namibia observing gamma-rays in the energy range from a few tens of GeV to a few tens of TeV. The Cherenkov signal detected by photomultiplier tubes is sampled at 1 GHz. In nominal data acquisition (charge) mode, this signal is integrated over a fixed window of 16 ns in case trigger conditions are met. Thanks to the electronics upgrade of the four H.E.S.S. I cameras in spring 2017, full 1 GHz-sampled waveforms can be read out in parallel to the nominal charge mode. This allows for a h…
We are in the process of upgrading the VERITAS array of Cherenkov telescopes with new, high efficiency photomultipliers (PMT) that will considerably lower the energy threshold of the instrument and improve the overall sensitivity. The upgrade will be finished in Summer 2012 when the PMTs will be installed in the existing cameras. We discuss the performance of the new photon detectors and the status of the project.
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next generation of ground-based very high energy gamma-ray instruments; the facility will be organized in two arrays, one for each hemisphere. The atmospheric calibration of the CTA telescopes is a critical task. The atmosphere affects the measured Cherenkov yield in several ways: the air-shower development itself, the variation of the Cherenkov angle with altitude, the loss of photons due to scattering and absorption of Cherenkov light out of the camera field-of-view and the scattering of photons into the camera. In this scenario, aerosols are the mo…
In 2015/16, the photomultiplier cameras of the H.E.S.S. Cherenkov telescopes CT1-4 have undergone a major upgrade. The entire electronics has been replaced, using NECTAr chips for the front-end readout. A new ventilation system has been installed and several auxiliary components have been replaced. Besides this, the internal control and readout software was rewritten from scratch in a modern and modular way. Ethernet technology was used wherever possible to ensure both flexibility, stability and high bandwidth. An overview of the installed components will be given.
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) gamma-ray observatory consists of 300 water Cherenkov detectors and has been fully operational since March 2015 in central Mexico. It detects cosmic- and gamma-ray showers in the TeV energy range. For multi-TeV energies, the shower reconstruction and hence the performance of the detector is affected by the partial containment of the showers within the array. To improve the sensitivity at the highest energies, HAWC is being upgraded with an outrigger array. It consists of 350 comparably much smaller water Cherenkov detectors, sparsely distributed around …
The MAGIC telescopes are two Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) located on the Canary island of La Palma. With 17m diameter mirror dishes and ultra-fast electronics, they provide an energy threshold as low as 50 GeV for observations at low zenith angles. The first MAGIC telescope was taken in operation in 2004 whereas the second one joined in 2009. In 2011 we started a major upgrade program to improve and to unify the stereoscopic system of the two similar but at that time different telescopes. Here we report on the upgrade of the readout electronics and digital trigger of the tw…
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) high-energy gamma-ray observatory has recently been completed on the slopes of the Sierra Negra volcano in central Mexico. HAWC consists of 300 Water Cherenkov Detectors, each containing 180 m$^3$ of ultra-purified water, that cover a total surface area of 20,000 m$^2$. It detects and reconstructs cosmic- and gamma-ray showers in the energy range of 100 GeV to 100 TeV. The HAWC trigger for the highest energy gammas reaches an effective area of 10$^5$ m$^2$ but many of them are poorly reconstructed because the shower core falls outside the array. An upgr…
VERITAS is a ground-based gamma-ray instrument operating at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in southern Arizona. With an array of four imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs), VERITAS is designed to measure gamma rays with energies from $\sim$ 85 GeV up to > 30 TeV. It has a sensitivity to detect a point source with a flux of 1$\%$ of the Crab Nebula flux within 25 hours. Since its first light observation in 2007, VERITAS has continued its successful mission for over seven years with two major upgrades: the relocation of telescope 1 in 2009 and a camera upgrade in 2012. We prese…
MAGIC is a system of two Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes located on the Canary island of La Palma, Spain. During summer 2011 and 2012 it underwent a major upgrade. The main subsystems upgraded were the MAGIC-I camera and its trigger system and the readout system of both telescopes. We use observations of the Crab Nebula taken at low and medium zenith angles to assess the key performance parameters of the MAGIC stereo system. For low zenith angle observations, the standard trigger threshold of the MAGIC telescopes is about 50 GeV. The integral sensitivity for point-like sources with Cr…
The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) is an array of five Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes located in the Khomas Highland of Namibia. H.E.S.S. observes gamma rays above tens of GeV by detecting the Cherenkov light that is produced when Very High Energy gamma rays interact with the Earth's atmosphere. The H.E.S.S. Data Acquisition System (DAQ) coordinates the nightly telescope operations, ensuring that the various components communicate properly and behave as intended. It also provides the interface between the telescopes and the people on shift who guide the operations. The DA…
Ground-based gamma-ray astronomy in the Very High Energy (VHE, E>100 GeV) regime has fast become one of the most interesting and productive sub-fields of astrophysics today. Utilizing the Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Technique (IACT) to reconstruct the energy and direction of incoming gamma-ray photons from the universe, several source-classes have been revealed by previous and current generations of IACT telescopes (e.g. Whipple, MAGIC, HESS and VERITAS). The next generation pointing IACT experiment, the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), will provide increased sensitivity across a wider energ…
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next-generation ground-based observatory for very-high energy gamma-ray astronomy. CTA will have unparalleled sensitivity and angular resolution and will detect gamma-ray sources nearly 100 times faster than current arrays, enabling valuable multiwavelength and multimessenger observations. The Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (SCT) is a candidate for the Medium-Sized telescope in CTA. A prototype SCT (pSCT) has been constructed at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Arizona USA. Its camera is currently partially instrumented with 1600 pixels (2.7 d…
MAGIC is a system of two Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes located at the Canary Island of La Palma, designed to observe gamma rays with energies above 50 GeV. Recently it has undergone an upgrade of the camera, digital trigger and readout systems. The upgrade has led to an improvement in the performance of the telescopes, especially in the lower energy range. We evaluate the performance of the upgraded MAGIC telescopes using Monte Carlo simulations and a large sample of Crab Nebula data. We study differential and integral sensitivity of the system, its angular resolution as well as its…
The Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (SCT) is a candidate technology for a medium-sized telescope within the Cherenkov Telescope Array, the next generation ground based observatory for very high energy gamma ray astronomy. The SCT uses a novel two-mirror design and is expected to yield improvements in field of view and image resolution compared to traditional Cherenkov telescopes based on single-mirror-dish optics. To match the improved optical resolution, challenging requirements of high channel count and density at low power consumption must be overcome by the camera. The prototype camera, cur…
The MAGIC telescopes are two Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) located on the Canary island of La Palma. The telescopes are designed to measure Cherenkov light from air showers initiated by gamma rays in the energy regime from around 50 GeV to more than 50 TeV. The two telescopes were built in 2004 and 2009, respectively, with different cameras, triggers and readout systems. In the years 2011-2012 the MAGIC collaboration undertook a major upgrade to make the stereoscopic system uniform, improving its overall performance and easing its maintenance. In particular, the camera, the …
IceCube is a cubic-kilometer scale neutrino telescope located at the geographic South Pole. The detector utilizes the extremely transparent Antarctic ice as a medium for detecting Cherenkov radiation from neutrino interactions. While the optical properties of the glacial ice are generally well modeled and understood, the uncertainties which remain are still the dominant source of systematic uncertainties for many IceCube analyses. A camera and LED system is being built for the IceCube Upgrade that will enable the observation of optical properties throughout the Upgrade array. The SPICEcore hol…
A fast trigger system is being designed as a potential upgrade to VERITAS, or as the basis for a future array of imaging atmospheric-Cherenkov telescopes such as AGIS. The scientific goal is a reduction of the energy threshold by a factor of 2 over the current threshold of VERITAS of around 130 GeV. The trigger is being designed to suppress both accidentals from the night-sky background and cosmic rays. The trigger uses field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) so that it is adaptable to different observing modes and special physics triggers, e.g. pulsars. The trigger consists of three levels: Th…
With the development of the Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Technique (IACT), Gamma-ray astronomy has become one of the most interesting and productive fields of astrophysics. Current IACT telescope arrays (MAGIC, H.E.S.S, VERITAS) use photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) to detect the optical/near-UV Cherenkov radiation emitted due to the interaction of gamma rays with the atmosphere. For the next generation of IACT experiments, the possibility of replacing the PMTs with Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) is being studied. Among the main drawbacks of SiPMs are their limited active area (leading to an inc…
VERITAS is an array of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes sensitive to gamma rays in the energy range between 85 GeV and 30 TeV. The instrument underwent an upgrade of the camera triggers in November 2011. The new systems use 400 MHz Xilinix Virtex-5 FPGAs for the pixel neighbor coincidence logic necessary to produce a camera-level trigger. The upgraded systems are capable of time-aligning individual triggering pixels to within ~0.2 nanoseconds, allowing for an operational pixel-to-pixel coincidence window of ~5 nanoseconds. This reduced coincidence window provides improved rejection of …
The Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (SCT) is a proposal for the Medium Size Telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array. Its concept is based on a two-mirror optical system designed to improve the telescope field of view and image resolution with respect to the single mirror Davies-Cotton solution. The SCT camera is planned to be instrumented with 177 photodetection modules, each composed of 64 Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM) pixels. The third generation of $6 x 6~mm^2$ high density NUV SiPMs (NUV-HD3) produced by Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) in collaboration with INFN has been used to equip o…
The MAGIC experiment was upgraded to a two-telescope system in 2009. Unlike other Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescope arrays, MAGIC has operated for five years exclusively in monoscopic mode, and the single telescope analysis was optimized throughout this time. To improve the analysis, we used techniques like the random forest event classification method for different purposes, and sophisticated image cleaning algorithms. The monoscopic performance was optimized in the energy domain around and below 100 GeV, which is inaccessible for the other arrays of Cherenkov telescopes. Still, with these anal…
The two MAGIC 17-m diameter Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes have been equipped to work also as an intensity interferometer with a deadtime-free, 4-channel, GPU-based, real-time correlator. Operating with baselines between approx. 40 and 90 m the MAGIC interferometer is able to measure stellar diameters of 0.5-1 mas in the 400-440 nm wavelength range with a sensitivity roughly 10 times better than that achieved in the 1970s by the Narrabri Stellar Intensity Interferometer. Besides, active mirror control allows to split the primary mirrors into sub-mirrors. This allows to make simultane…
Currently the standard light sensors for imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes are the classical photo multiplier tubes that are using bialkali photo cathodes. About eight years ago we initiated an improvement program with the Photo Multiplier Tube (PMT) manufacturers Hamamatsu (Japan), Electron Tubes Enterprises (England) and Photonis (France) for the needs of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. As a result, after about 40 years of stagnation of the peak Quantum Efficiency (QE) on the level of 25-27%, new PMTs appeared with a peak QE of 35%. These have got the name super-bialkali. Th…
In October 2019 the central 28m telescope of the H.E.S.S. experiment has been upgraded with a new camera. The camera is based on the FlashCam design which has been developed in view of a possible future implementation in the medium-sized telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). We report here on the results of the science verification program that has been performed after commissioning of the new camera, to show that the camera and software pipelines are working up to expectations.
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory is an air-shower array located in Mexico. It is sensitive to the highest energy photons we detect at the Earth, reaching energies of several tens of TeV. The observatory was completed more than one year ago and we are presenting in this contribution the first results about its performance. We also show the results of the first-year survey, the first flaring events detected by the observatory, its sensitivity to extended sources and the plans for the upgrade that is currently taking place.
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the the next generation facility of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes; two sites will cover both hemispheres. CTA will reach unprecedented sensitivity, energy and angular resolution in very-high-energy gamma-ray astronomy. Each CTA array will include four Large Size Telescopes (LSTs), designed to cover the low-energy range of the CTA sensitivity ($\sim$20 GeV to 200 GeV). In the baseline LST design, the focal-plane camera will be instrumented with 265 photodetector clusters; each will include seven photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), with an entrance win…
MAGIC is a system of two Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes located in the Canary island of La Palma, Spain. During summer 2011 and 2012 it underwent a series of upgrades, involving the exchange of the MAGIC-I camera and its trigger system, as well as the upgrade of the readout system of both telescopes. We use observations of the Crab Nebula taken at low and medium zenith angles to assess the key performance parameters of the MAGIC stereo system. For low zenith angle observations, the standard trigger threshold of the MAGIC telescopes is ~50GeV. The integral sensitivity for point-like s…
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a cubic kilometer volume neutrino detector installed in the Antarctic at the geographic South Pole. Neutrinos are detected through the observation of Cherenkov light from charged relativistic particles generated in neutrino interactions, using an array of 86~strings of optical sensor modules. Currently an upgrade to the IceCube detector is in preparation. This IceCube Upgrade will add seven additional strings with new optical sensors and calibration devices. A new camera system is designed for this upgrade to be installed with the new optical modules. This c…
One of the main goals of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) observatory is to improve the $γ$-ray detection sensitivity by an order of magnitude, compared to the current ground-based observatories. Widening the energy coverage down to 20 GeV and up to 300 TeV is also an important goal. This goal will be possible by using Large-Sized Telescopes (LSTs) for the energy range of 20--200 GeV, Medium-Sized Telescopes (MSTs) for 100 GeV--10 TeV, and Small-Sized Telescopes (SSTs) for energies above 5 TeV. The LSTs, which focus on the lowest energies, are operated in a region dominated by background ev…
In October 2019, the central 28 m telescope of the H.E.S.S. experiment has been upgraded with a new camera. The camera is based on the FlashCam design which has been developed in view of a possible future implementation in the Medium-Sized Telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), with emphasis on cost and performance optimization and on reliability. The fully digital design of the trigger and readout system makes it possible to operate the camera at high event rates and to precisely adjust and understand the trigger system. The novel design of the front-end electronics achieves a dyn…