Multi-TeV Energy Resolution Studies with VERITAS

TL;DR

This paper investigates the impact of saturation effects on energy resolution in multi-TeV gamma-ray observations with VERITAS, proposing a method to improve accuracy by analyzing non-saturating showers at large core distances.

Contribution

It introduces a method to assess and mitigate energy resolution bias caused by saturation effects in multi-TeV gamma-ray data from VERITAS.

Findings

Identified saturation effects bias energy estimates in multi-TeV gamma-ray spectra.

Developed a technique using large core distance showers to evaluate energy resolution.

Proposed improvements to gamma-ray spectral analysis in the multi-TeV regime.

Abstract

This work aims to investigate the systematic uncertainty in gamma-ray spectra arising from saturation effects from bright images reconstructed by VERITAS. The goal of the work is to improve or validate the energy resolution used for deriving gamma-ray spectra in the sub-TeV to multi-TeV energy regime with VERITAS. Saturation from multi-TeV gamma-ray events affects the image brightness used to reconstruct the energy of the primary gamma ray, and potentially biases the energy estimate. We discuss a method for investigating the energy resolution bias in these multi-TeV gamma-ray events by looking at showers with large core distances that do not saturate the cameras.