Direct illumination calibration of telescopes at the quantum precision limit

The electronic response of a telescope under direct illumination by a point-like light source is based on photon counting. With the data obtained using the SNDICE light source and the Megacam camera on the CFHT telescope, we show that the ultimate precision is only limited by the photon statistical fluctuation, which is below 1 ppm. A key feature of the analysis is the incorporation of diffuse light that interferes with specularly reflected light in the transmission model to explain the observed diffraction patterns. The effect of diffuse light, usually hidden conveniently in the Strehl ratio for an object at infinity, is characterized with a precision of 10 ppm. In particular, the spatial frequency representation provides some strong physical constraints and a practical monitoring of the roughness of various optical surfaces.Comment: accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Test of Skydice CLAP electronics

This report describes the test of the CLAP readout electronics done for the commisioning the Skydice instrument. The CLAP hardware consists of a) the Cooled Large Area Photodiode (Hamamatsu S3477), b) a FE_box containing the frontend electronic board and the CLAP, c) a BE-box containing the backend electronic board, d) a PC readout of the BE-box through a USB interface. The tests reported here concern a prototype version of the CLAP electronics delivered in July 2011. A final version of both FE and BE boards are expected for end of october 2011

Digital Image Processing for SNDICE

We shall report here the methods developped for the analysis of diffractive ring features in Megacam images produced by SNDICE light source in a position fixed relatively to the telescope. The basic hypothesis, knowing the great stability of SNDICE illumination (10-4), is that they are due to small angle scattering of light transmitted through the CFH telescope on small defects lying on the optical surfaces either on the primary mirror or inside the camera (including correction lens, image stabilisation unit, filter, cryostat window or CCD surface)

Analysis of Purity Probes H1 Liquid Argon Calorimeter

The sensitivity of our liquid argon purity measurement -around 0.03%- leads us to refine the tools used classically in this field. First we introduce an analytical form describing the spectrum of a 207Bi source for different values of purity and ionisation chamber gap. Second we analyse a surprising new effect: the variation of the ionisation yield of this source with the liquid argon temperature. Third we use our data to refine the charge collection models which relate electron recombination and attachment cross-sections to the electrical field

Direct illumination LED calibration for telescope photometry

Accepted by Nuclear Inst. and Methods in Physics Research, A NIMAA calibration method for telescope photometry, based on the direct illumination of a telescope with a calibrated light source regrouping multiple LEDs, is proposed. Its purpose is to calibrate the instrument response. The main emphasis of the proposed method is the traceability of the calibration process and a continuous monitoring of the instrument in order to maintain a 0.2% accuracy over a period of years. Its specificity is to map finely the response of the telescope and its camera as a function of all light ray parameters. This feature is essential to implement a computer model of the instrument representing the variation of the overall light collection efficiency of each pixel for various filter configurations. We report on hardware developments done for SNDICE, the first application of this direct illumination calibration system which will be installed in Canada France Hawaii telescope (CFHT) for its leading supernova experiment (SNLS)

Spectral calibration of SNDICE

SNDICE primary goal was to provide a photometric calibration of the CFH telescope in order to supplement its astronomic calibration based on reference stars. In particular it is intended to uniformize the response of the telescope over the very large field of the Megacam instrument and over well defined segments of the optical spectrum corresponding more or less to the filter set used for the SNLS experiment. The study of spectral features ofthe LED sources used by SNDICE came in this perpective mainly as a way to quantify second order corrections taking into account the shape of the spectral distribution around its central wavelength value. The spectrophotometric bench presented here did not need to have a precision better than a few percent for this task and consequently it is just an adaptation of our photometric bench presented elsewhere. It could be roughly described, as its photometric counterpart, as a «direct illumination LED calibration

L0 Project: Monitoring H1 Triggers with SpaCal

We have built a VME module using H1’s ADC and BaBar TDC interfaced to H1’s 29K processor. It is used to monitor SpaCal trigger, energy sums and trigger elements, by reading up to 130Kevents/s. The timing resolution is found to be surprisingly good ( »1ns) for energy sum signals. The performances under various beam conditions are shown, including a first study of the “hotspot” counters designed as a veto against e-beam background

The DICE calibration project: design, characterization, and first results

We describe the design, operation, and first results of a photometric calibration project, called DICE (Direct Illumination Calibration Experiment), aiming at achieving precise instrumental calibration of optical telescopes. The heart of DICE is an illumination device composed of 24 narrow-spectrum, high-intensity, light-emitting diodes (LED) chosen to cover the ultraviolet-to-near-infrared spectral range. It implements a point-like source placed at a finite distance from the telescope entrance pupil, yielding a flat field illumination that covers the entire field of view of the imager. The purpose of this system is to perform a lightweight routine monitoring of the imager passbands with a precision better than 5 per-mil on the relative passband normalisations and about 3{\AA} on the filter cutoff positions. The light source is calibrated on a spectrophotometric bench. As our fundamental metrology standard, we use a photodiode calibrated at NIST. The radiant intensity of each beam is mapped, and spectra are measured for each LED. All measurements are conducted at temperatures ranging from 0{\deg}C to 25{\deg}C in order to study the temperature dependence of the system. The photometric and spectroscopic measurements are combined into a model that predicts the spectral intensity of the source as a function of temperature. We find that the calibration beams are stable at the $10^{-4}$ level -- after taking the slight temperature dependence of the LED emission properties into account. We show that the spectral intensity of the source can be characterised with a precision of 3{\AA} in wavelength. In flux, we reach an accuracy of about 0.2-0.5% depending on how we understand the off-diagonal terms of the error budget affecting the calibration of the NIST photodiode. With a routine 60-mn calibration program, the apparatus is able to constrain the passbands at the targeted precision levels.Comment: 25 pages, 27 figures, accepted for publication in A&

Spin-Parity Analysis of the Centrally produced KsKs system at 800 GeV

Results are presented of the spin-parity analysis on a sample of centrally produced mesons in the reaction (p p -> p_{slow} K_s K_s p_{fast}) with 800 GeV protons on liquid hydrogen. The spin-parity analysis in the mass region between threshold and 1.58 GeV/c^2 shows that the (K_s K_s) system is produced mainly in S-wave. The f_0(1500) is clearly observed in this region. Above 1.58 GeV/c^2 two solutions are possible, one with mainly S-wave and another with mainly D-wave. This ambiguity prevents a unique determination of the spin of the f_J(1710) meson.Comment: 6 pages, including 6 figures. LaTex, uses 'espcrc2.sty'. To appear in LEAP'96 proceeding