The Topo-trigger: A new stereo trigger for lowering the energy threshold of IACTs

TL;DR

The paper introduces the Topo-trigger, a new stereo trigger system for MAGIC telescopes that reduces the energy threshold by using spatial coincidence to filter out accidental events, validated through simulations and real data.

Contribution

It presents a novel hardware trigger that leverages spatial information to lower the energy threshold of IACTs without increasing data rates.

Findings

Successful simulation of the Topo-trigger concept.

Effective reduction of the energy threshold in real data tests.

Potential for improved sensitivity in gamma-ray observations.

Abstract

The purpose of the hardware presented in this contribution is to decrease the energy threshold of the MAGIC telescopes without significantly increasing the data acquisition rate. To achieve this purpose, we developed an additional level of trigger that relies on the location in both MAGIC cameras where the trigger is issued to rule out accidental events. This allows to decrease the Discriminator Threshold (DT), which results in a reduction of the energy threshold of the instrument. We simulated the Topo-trigger concept using the standard MAGIC Monte Carlo (MC) and tested it with real telescope data. In this paper we show the concept and results of these tests.