A comparative study on different background estimation methods for extensive air shower arrays

Abstract

Background estimation is essential when studying TeV γ-ray astronomy for extensive air shower arrays. In this work, by applying four different methods including equi-zenith angle method, surrounding window method, direct integration method, and time-swapping method, the number of the background events is calculated. Based on simulation samples, the statistical significance of the excess signal from different background estimation methods is determined. Following this, we discuss the limitations and the applicability of the four methods under different conditions. Under the detector stability assumption with signals, the results from the above four methods are consistent at the 1σ level. In the no signal condition, when the acceptance of the detector changes with both space and time, the surrounding window method is the most stable and hardly affected. In this acceptance assumption, we find that the background estimation in the direct integration and time-swapping methods are sensitive to the selection of time window, and the shorter time window can reduce the impact on the background estimation to some extent.