New Electronics for the Cherenkov Telescope Array

Abstract

Very high energy gamma-ray astronomy is now bringing an invaluable contribution to the understanding of violent phenomena in the Universe, as well as the search for exotic physics such as indirect detection of dark matter or a test of Lorentz invariance violation. The current Imaging Arrays of Cherenkov Telescopes (IACT) show that this technique is mature. In Europe, the community is gathering around the Cherenkov Telescope Array consortium, to design and build the next generation ground-based array. It should reach an order of magnitude in sensitivity in a wide energy band, ranging from 10 GeV to more than 100 TeV. This goal can be achieved with an array of 50–100 telescopes of various sizes at various spacings. With about 2000 channels per camera, a specific effort has to be made to design front-end electronics with a lower cost and better performances. A gain in cost and performances can be obtained by maximising the integration of the front-end electronics in an ASIC. The amplifiers, analogue memories, digitization and first level buffering can be embedded in the same component. We present here the NECTAr project aiming at building a demonstrator element of a generic camera built around this component.