Search

With the next generation of Atmospheric Cerenkov Telescopes (ACT) well on their way, effort has being shifted now towards a further improvement of the capabilities of these instruments. These next generation experiments have improved up to an order of magnitude their sensitivity over their first generation counterparts, and have extended the energy coverage down to about 50 GeV. However, it is not clear whether the same approach is optimal for energies above 1 TeV, and with clear evidence of high energy emission above this energy from several astrophysical sources, we believe that this energy range could be further exploited. Many of our physics goals, such as, limits on quantum gravity or spectral variability and features of the high energy emission from AGNs, would benefit from an increase of sensitivity in this direction. Here, we investigate a possible way of increasing the collection area of ACTs above 1 TeV by using a wide-field-of-view (∼ 10°) camera. Both, the scientific motivation and preliminary Monte Carlo studies of the performance of such a detector, are discussed and presented here. © 2005 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this contribution we study the net polarization of the Cherenkov Light emitted in Extensive Air Showers of energy around 1 TeV, by means of an Air Shower Monte Carlo simulation. The study investigates the modification of the Hillas image parameters and telescope performance due to a particular arrangement of polarizing filters in front of the camera of a Cherenkov Telescope. © 2000 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]