Cherenkov-Plenoscope

Abstract

Telescopes -- far seeing -- have since centuries revealed insights to objects at cosmic distances. Adopted for gamma-ray-astronomy, ground based Cherenkov-telescopes image the faint Cherenkov-light of air-showers induced by cosmic gamma-rays rushing into earth's atmosphere. In the race for the lowest possible energy-threshold for cosmic gamma-rays, these Cherenkov-telescopes have become bigger, and now reached their physical limits. The required structural rigidity for image-quality constrains a cost-effective construction of telescopes with apertures beyond 30 meter in diameter. Moreover, as the aperture increases, the narrower depth-of-field irrecoverably blurs the images what prevents the reconstruction of the cosmic particle's properties. To overcome these limits, we propose plenoptic-perception with light-fields. Our proposed 71 meter Cherenkov-plenoscope requires much less structural rigidity and turns a narrow depth-of-field into three-dimensional reconstruction-power. With an energy-threshold for gamma-rays of one Giga electron Volt, 20 times lower than what is foreseen for the future planned Cherenkov-Telescope-Array (CTA), the Cherenkov-plenoscope could become the portal to enter the sub second time-scale of the highly variable gamma-ray-sky. Also, this doctoral-thesis contains a second part on the prospects of single-photon-perception in Cherenkov-astronomy.