An elastic lidar system for the H.E.S.S. Experiment

TL;DR

This paper presents the design, implementation, and operation of an elastic lidar system installed at the H.E.S.S. gamma-ray observatory to measure atmospheric properties affecting Cherenkov light observations.

Contribution

It introduces a specialized lidar system for atmospheric monitoring at the H.E.S.S. site, aiding in reducing systematic errors in gamma-ray flux measurements.

Findings

Lidar system successfully measures atmospheric extinction parameters.

Implementation improves accuracy of gamma-ray source flux calculations.

Operational data demonstrates system reliability and effectiveness.

Abstract

The H.E.S.S. experiment in Namibia, Africa, is a high energy gamma ray tele- scope sensitive in the energy range from 100 Gev to a few tens of TeV, via the use of the atmospheric Cherenkov technique. To minimize the systematic errors on the derived fluxes of the measured sources, one has to calculate the impact of the atmospheric properties, in particular the extinction parameter of the Cherenkov light ( 300-650 nm) exploited to observe and reconstruct atmospheric particle showers initiated by gamma-ray photons. A lidar can provide this kind of information for some given wavelengths within this range. In this paper we report on the hardware components, operation and data acquisition of such a system installed at the H.E.S.S. site.