The NectarCAM camera project

J-F. Glicenstein (1) , M. Barcelo , J-A. Barrio , O. Blanch , J. Boix , J. Bolmont (2) , C. Boutonnet (3) , S. Cazaux (1) , E. Chabanne (4) , C. Champion , F. Chateau (1) , S. Colonges (3) , P. Corona (2) , S. Couturier (5) , B. Courty (3) , E. Delagnes (1) , C. Delgado , J.-P. Ernenwein (6) , S. Fegan (5) , O. Ferreira (5) , M. Fesquet (1) , G. Fontaine (5) , N. Fouque (4) , F. Henault (7) , D. Gascón , D. Herranz , R. Hermel (4) , D. Hoffmann (6) , J. Houles (6) , S. Karkar (2) , B. Khelifi (5) , Jürgen Knödlseder (8) , Gines Martinez Garcia , K. Lacombe (8) , G. Lamanna (4) , T. Leflour (4) , R. Lopez-Coto , F. Louis (1) , A. Mathieu (5) , Emmanuel Moulin (1) , P. Nayman (2) , F. Nunio (1) , J-F. Olive (8) , J-L. Panazol (4) , P-O. Petrucci (7) , M. Punch (9) , J. Prast (4) , P. Ramon (8) , M. Riallot , M. Ribó , S. Rosier-Lees (4) , A. Sanuy , J. Siero , J-P. Tavernet (2) , L. A. Tejedor , F. Toussenel (2) , George Vasileiadis (10) , V. Voisin (2) , V. Waegebert (8) , C. Zurbach (10) , For The Cta Consortium.

1 IRFU - Institut de Recherches sur les lois Fondamentales de l'Univers
2 LPNHE - Laboratoire de Physique Nucléaire et de Hautes Énergies
3 APC (UMR_7164) - AstroParticule et Cosmologie
4 LAPP - Laboratoire d'Annecy de Physique des Particules
5 LLR - Laboratoire Leprince-Ringuet
6 CPPM - Centre de Physique des Particules de Marseille
7 IPAG - Institut de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble
8 IRAP - Institut de recherche en astrophysique et planétologie
9 APC - AHE - APC - Astrophysique des Hautes Energies
10 LUPM - Laboratoire Univers et Particules de Montpellier

In the framework of the next generation of Cherenkov telescopes, the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), NectarCAM is a camera designed for the medium size telescopes covering the central energy range of 100 GeV to 30 TeV. NectarCAM will be finely pixelated (~ 1800 pixels for a 8 degree field of view, FoV) in order to image atmospheric Cherenkov showers by measuring the charge deposited within a few nanoseconds time-window. It will have additional features like the capacity to record the full waveform with GHz sampling for every pixel and to measure event times with nanosecond accuracy. An array of a few tens of medium size telescopes, equipped with NectarCAMs, will achieve up to a factor of ten improvement in sensitivity over existing instruments in the energy range of 100 GeV to 10 TeV. The camera is made of roughly 250 independent read-out modules, each composed of seven photo-multipliers, with their associated high voltage base and control, a read-out board and a multi-service backplane board. The read-out boards use NECTAr (New Electronics for the Cherenkov Telescope Array) ASICs which have the dual functionality of analogue memories and Analogue to Digital Converter (ADC). The camera trigger to be used will be flexible so as to minimize the read-out dead-time of the NECTAr chips. We present the camera concept and the design and tests of the various subcomponents. The design includes the mechanical parts, the cooling of the electronics, the readout, the data acquisition, the trigger, the monitoring and services.

Domaines: Instrumentation et méthodes pour l'astrophysique [astro-ph.IM]; Instrumentation et méthodes pour l'astrophysique [astro-ph.IM]

J-F. Glicenstein, M. Barcelo, J-A. Barrio, O. Blanch, J. Boix, et al.. The NectarCAM camera project. 33rd International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2013, Jul 2013, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. ⟨in2p3-00848794⟩