Bonn 2020 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 100: Gamma astronomy II

T 100.8: Talk

Friday, April 3, 2020, 12:45–13:00, H-HS XVI

Intensity interferometry setup characterization for possible measurements at the H.E.S.S. telescopes — •Naomi Vogel, Andreas Zmija, Gisela Anton, Stefan Funk, Dmitry Malyshev, Adrian Zink, and Thilo Michel — Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, ECAP

Intensity interferometry is a method which can be used to determine the angular diameter of a star by taking the measurements of at least two telescopes with varying baselines into account. An advantage of this technique is that only the measured intensities of a thermal source which are observed by the detectors each at a different position on Earth are of importance for the correlation. Intensity interferometry measurements can be performed at Cherenkov telescopes with additional detector systems, such as photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), which are able to record photon counts continuously. Provided that the collecting area of the Cherenkov telescopes is very large, the expected photon count rate is on the order of hundreds of MHz. In order to prove that our setup can handle such high photon count rates, we characterized the PMTs behaviour and measured intensity correlations at high photon rates in the laboratory. Furthermore, measurements were also carried out at the medium sized telescope prototype of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) in Berlin Adlershof. In this contribution we will present our laboratory setup and results as well as the results from the measurements at Adlershof. These tests serve as a preparation for measurements with H.E.S.S. Cherenkov telescopes in Namibia.