Muons as a tool for background rejection in imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope arrays

TL;DR

This paper investigates using Cherenkov light from muons in atmospheric showers as a novel method to improve background rejection in high-energy gamma-ray telescopes, potentially enhancing detection capabilities at tens of TeV energies.

Contribution

It introduces an analytical model for muon Cherenkov light, enabling rapid simulation and assessment of muon-based background rejection in large Cherenkov telescope arrays.

Findings

Muon identification significantly improves background rejection at > tens of TeV.

Large telescopes (>20 m) benefit most from muon-based discrimination.

Analytical modeling allows efficient exploration of high-energy regimes.

Abstract

The presence of muons in air-showers initiated by cosmic ray protons and nuclei is well established as a powerful tool to separate such showers from those initiated by gamma-rays. However, so far this approach has been fully exploited only for ground level particle detecting arrays. In this contribution, we explore the feasibility of using Cherenkov light from muons as a background rejection tool for imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope arrays at the highest energies. We adopt an analytical model of the Cherenkov light from individual muons to allow rapid simulation of a large number of showers in a hybrid mode. This allows exploration of the very high background rejection power regime at acceptable cost in terms of computing time. We find that for very large telescopes ($\gtrsim$20 m diameter), efficient identification of muons would provide a major improvement with respect to standard background rejection techniques at energies above several tens of TeVs.