A Compact High Energy Camera (CHEC) for the Gamma-ray Cherenkov Telescope of the Cherenkov Telescope Array

TL;DR

The paper presents the design, testing, and deployment progress of the Compact High-Energy Camera (CHEC) for the Gamma-ray Cherenkov Telescope, part of the Cherenkov Telescope Array, emphasizing its high pixel count, fast electronics, and successful field testing.

Contribution

It introduces a novel compact camera design with advanced electronics for gamma-ray detection, demonstrating successful lab and field performance for CTA deployment.

Findings

First Cherenkov light detected with CHEC-M prototype

High event readout rate of over 600 per second

Effective lab and field testing results confirming design robustness

Abstract

The Gamma-ray Cherenkov Telescope (GCT) is one of the Small Size Telescopes (SSTs) proposed for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) aimed at the 1 TeV to 300 TeV energy range. GCT will be equipped with a Compact High-Energy Camera (CHEC) containing 2048 pixels of physical size about 6$\times$6~mm$^2$, leading to a field of view of over 8 degrees. Electronics based on custom TARGET ASICs and FPGAs sample incoming signals at a gigasample per second and provide a flexible triggering scheme. Waveforms for every pixel in every event are read out are on demand without loss at over 600 events per second. A GCT prototype in Meudon, Paris saw first Cherenkov light from air showers in late 2015, using the first CHEC prototype, CHEC-M. This contribution presents results from lab and field tests with CHEC-M and the progress made to a robust camera design for deployment within CTA.