Publications Details

Detection of very high energy. gamma. -rays from the Crab nebula

Akerlof, C.; Dimarco, J.; Levy, H.; Meyer, D.; Radusewicz, P.; Tschirhart, R.; Yama, Z.; Maccallum, C.

During the period October 1988 through December 1988, a search was made for very high energy gamma rays from the direction of the Crab nebula using the atmospheric Cerenkov technique. The detector consisted of seven-fold arrays of photomultiplier tubes at the focii of two 11-meter diameter solar concentrators situated in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A DC signal was detected from the Crab nebula with a statistical significance of 5.8 sigma after the application of various cuts designed to suppress the background of hadronic showers. A search for a pulsed component failed to identify a significant signal in phase with the radio pulse from the Crab pulsar. These results with a threshold energy of 200 GeV are in substantial agreement with high energy results recently reported by the Mt. Hopkins group. 16 refs., 3 figs., 3 tabs.