29 July 2015 to 6 August 2015
World Forum
Europe/Amsterdam timezone

Application of Maximum Entropy Deconvolution to $\gamma$-ray skymaps

1 Aug 2015, 15:30
1h
Mississippi Foyer (World Forum)

Mississippi Foyer

World Forum

Churchillplein 10 2517 JW Den Haag The Netherlands
Board: 54
Poster contribution GA-EX Poster 2 GA

Speaker

Ms Susanne Raab (ECAP, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)

Description

Skymaps measured with Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACT) represent the real source distribution convolved with the point spread function of the observing instrument. Current IACTs have an angular resolution in the order of 0.1 degree which is rather large for the study of morphological structures and for comparing the morphology in $\gamma$-rays to measurements in other wavelengths where the instruments have better angular resolutions. Serendipitously it is possible to approximate the underlying true source distribution by applying a deconvolution algorithm to the observed skymap, thus effectively improving the instruments angular resolution. From the multitude of existing deconvolution algorithm several are already used in astronomy, but in the special case of $\gamma$-ray astronomy most of these algorithms are challenged due to the high noise level within the measured data. One promising algorithm for the application to $\gamma$-ray data is the Maximum Entropy Algorithm. The advantage of this algorithm is the possibility to take a priori knowledge into account and that it is an independent approach to previous work, e.g., Heinz et al. (2012) who applied the Richardson Lucy Algorithm to $\gamma$-ray skymaps. An implementation of the Maximum Entropy Algorithm is provided in the MemSys5 software package by Gull and Skilling (1999). As this algorithm is very sensitive to various input parameters it is essential to understand their influences. We present a study of these parameter influences in order to investigate the applicability of the Maximum Entropy Algorithm for the deconvolution of skymaps in $\gamma$-ray astronomy.
Registration number following "ICRC2015-I/" 227
Collaboration -- not specified --

Authors

Dr Ira Jung-Richardt (ECAP, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg) Ms Susanne Raab (ECAP, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)

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