Early attempts at atmospheric simulations for the Cherenkov Telescope Array

Abstract

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be the world's first observatory for detecting gamma-rays from astrophysical phenomena and is now in its prototyping phase with construction expected to begin in 2015/16. In this work we present the results from early attempts at detailed simulation studies performed to assess the need for atmospheric monitoring. This will include discussion of some lidar analysis methods with a view to determining a range resolved atmospheric transmission profile. We find that under increased aerosol density levels, simulated gamma-ray astronomy data is systematically shifted leading to softer spectra. With lidar data we show that it is possible to fit atmospheric transmission models needed for generating lookup tables, which are used to infer the energy of a gamma-ray event, thus making it possible to correct affected data that would otherwise be considered unusable.