arXiv subjects

Gisela Anton

Publications and source records attributed to Gisela Anton.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Mobile Intensity Interferometer for Stellar Observations (MI$^2$SO)

In recent years, intensity interferometry has seen renewed interest and successful application at Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope arrays. These measurements are usually performed during bright moon periods while the instruments' primary purpose -- gamma-ray observations -- cannot be fulfilled. The Mobile Intensity Interferometer for Stellar Observations was designed as a proof of concept for a purpose-built intensity interferometer. Using acrylic Fresnel lenses 1 m in diameter with 1.2 m focal length, a compact, economical and lightweight design was realised. The detector fixture allows for translation in the z-axis to adjust for measurements at different wavelengths (and therefore focal points) and easy swapping of the detector in its entirety. Both mobility and scalability in quantity of this design allow for specific targeting of projected baselines and orientations based on the target. Particularly for potential binary systems, selective coverage of a target's u-v plane is essential to probing the characteristics accurately. A first campaign demonstrated the capability of these Fresnel lens telescopes by measuring the spatial coherence curve of Arcturus ($α$ Boo). In an observation time of less than 11 h, the angular diameter was measured with milliarcsecond precision, in agreement with the values in the literature.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2025

Towards measuring astrophysical third order correlation functions with the H.E.S.S. optical intensity interferometer

The closure phase, the sum of the three Fourier phases in a telescope triangle, is an important tool in astronomical interferometry, helping to reconstruct the geometries of the observed objects. While already established in amplitude interferometry, for the recently expanding field of intensity interferometers the closure phase enables recovering information of the interferometric phases that are otherwise inaccessible with this technique. To extract the (cosine of) the closure phase ($\cos ϕ$) in intensity interferometry, third-order correlations between three simultaneously measuring telescopes have to be computed. As the signal-to-noise of such three-photon correlations is too small for current generation intensity interferometers, no third-order correlations of astrophysical targets have been recorded so far. In this paper we present the first measurements of third order correlation functions of two stellar systems, Nunki ($σ$ Sgr) and Dschubba ($δ$ Sco), observed with the H.E.S.S. intensity interferometer in 2023. We show how to isolate the three-photon contribution term from the two-photon contributions, in order to access $\cos ϕ$. For the observed stellar targets the sensitivity is not high enough to extract closure phase information. To demonstrate that the analysis works well we further extract $\cos ϕ$ in a laboratory experiment, using the H.E.S.S. intensity interferometer and a pseudo-thermal light source.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2024

Simultaneous Two Colour Intensity Interferometry with H.E.S.S

In recent years, intensity interferometry has been successfully applied to the Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes H.E.S.S. , MAGIC, and VERITAS. All three telescope systems have proven the feasibility and capability of this method. After our first campaign in 2022, when two of the H.E.S.S. telescopes in Namibia were equipped with our external setup and the angular diameter of two stars was measured, our setup was upgraded for a second campaign in 2023, where the goal is to perform simultaneous two colour measurements. The second campaign not only involves a third equipped telescope, but also each mechanical setup now includes two interference filters at two different wavelengths (375 nm and 470 nm) with a broader bandwidth of 10 nm. This enables having simultaneous two colour measurements, which yields information about the star's physical size at different wavelengths. This is the first time that simultaneous dual-waveband intensity interferometry measurements are performed. The angular diameter results of the 4 stars, Mimosa (beta Cru), Eta Centauri (eta Cen), Nunki (sigma Sgr) and Dschubba (delta Sco), are reported, where the effects of limb darkening are also taken into account.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2023

First Intensity Interferometry Measurements with the H.E.S.S. Telescopes

Intensity interferometry for astrophysical observations has gained increasing interest in the last decade. The method of correlating photon fluxes at different telescopes for high resolution astronomy without access to the phase of the incoming light is insensitive to atmospheric turbulence and doesn't require high-precision optical path control. The necessary large collection areas can be provided by Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes. Implementation of intensity interferometers to existing telescope systems such as VERITAS and MAGIC has proven to be successful for high-resolution imaging of stars. In April 2022 we equipped two telescopes of the H.E.S.S. array in Namibia with an intensity interferometry setup to measure southern sky stars and star systems during the bright moon period. We mounted an external optical system to the lid of the telescope cameras, which splits the incoming light and feeds it into two photomultipliers in order to measure the zero-baseline correlation within one telescope in addition to the cross correlation between the telescopes. The optical elements are motorised, which enables live correction of tracking inaccuracies of the telescopes. During the campaign we measured the spatial correlation curves and thereby the angular diameters of λ Sco (Shaula) and σ Sgr (Nunki), while we also performed systematic studies of our interferometer using the multiple star system of α Cru (Acrux).

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2023

Optical intensity interferometry lab tests in preparation of stellar diameter measurements at IACTs at GHz photon rates

Astronomical intensity interferometry enables quantitative measurements of the source geometry by measuring the photon fluxes in individual telescopes and correlating them, rather than correlating the electromagnetic waves' amplitudes. This simplifies realization of large telescope baselines and high angular resolutions. Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs), intended to detect the optical emission of $γ$-ray induced air showers, are excellent candidates to perform intensity correlations in the optical at reasonable signal-to-noise ratios. The detected coherence time is on the scale of $10^{-12}$ to $10^{-15}$~seconds - depending on the optical bandwidth of the measurement - which challenges the detection system to work in a stable and accurate way. We developed an intensity interferometry setup applicable to IACTs, which measures the photo currents from photomultipliers and correlates them offline, and as such is designed to handle the very large photon rates provided by the telescopes. We present measurements in the lab simulating starlight using a xenon lamp and measured at different degrees of temporal and spatial coherence. Necessary calibration procedures are described with the goal of understanding the measurements quantitatively. Measured coherence times between $5\,$femtoseconds (corresponding signal-to-background ratio $5\cdot10^{-7}$) and $110\,$femtoseconds (signal-to-background ratio $10^{-5}$) are in good agreement with expectations, and so are the noise levels in the correlations, reaching down to $6 \cdot 10^{-8}$, after measurements between $30\,$minutes and $1\,$ hour.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2022

Personal Dosimetry in Direct Pulsed Photon Fields with the Dosepix Detector

First investigations regarding dosimetric properties of the hybrid, pixelated, photon-counting Dosepix detector in the direct beam of a pulsed photon field (RQR8) for the personal dose equivalent $H\mathrm{_p(10)}$ are presented. The influence quantities such as pulse duration and dose rate were varied, and their responses were compared to the legal limits provided in PTB-A 23.2. The variation of pulse duration at a nearly constant dose rate of about 3.7$\,$Sv/h shows a flat response around 1.0 from 3.6$\,$s down to 2$\,$ms. A response close to 1.0 is achieved for dose rates from 0.07$\,$Sv/h to 35$\,$Sv/h for both pixel sizes. Above this dose rate, the large pixels (220$\,μ$m edge length) are below the lower limit. The small pixels (55$\,μ$m edge length) stay within limits up to 704$\,$Sv/h. The count rate linearity is compared to previous results, confirming the saturating count rate for high dose rates.

physics.med-ph↗

arXiv2022

Comparing Different Approaches for Stellar Intensity Interferometry

Stellar intensity interferometers correlate photons within their coherence time and could overcome the baseline limitations of existing amplitude interferometers. Intensity interferometers do not rely on phase coherence of the optical elements and thus function without high grade optics and light combining delay lines. However, the coherence time of starlight observed with realistic optical filter bandwidths (> 0.1 nm) is usually much smaller than the time resolution of the detection system (> 10 ps), resulting in a greatly reduced correlation signal. Reaching high signal to noise in a reasonably short measurement time can be achieved in different ways: either by increasing the time resolution, which increases the correlation signal height, or by increasing the photon rate, which decreases statistical uncertainties of the measurement. We present laboratory measurements employing both approaches and directly compare them in terms of signal to noise ratio. A high time-resolution interferometry setup designed for small to intermediate size optical telescopes and thus lower photon rates (diameters < some meters) is compared to a setup capable of measuring high photon rates, which is planned to be installed at Cherenkov telescopes with dish diameters of > 10 m. We use a Xenon lamp as a common light source simulating starlight. Both setups measure the expected correlation signal and work at the expected shot-noise limit of statistical uncertainties for measurement times between 10 min and 23 h. We discuss the quantitative differences in the measurement results and give an overview of suitable operation regimes for each of the interferometer concepts.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2020

Neutrino Telescopes

This paper addresses the working principle of neutrino telescopes, important detector parameters as well as the layout and performance of current and future neutrino telescopes. It was prepared for the book "Probing Particle Physics with Neutrino Telescopes", C.~P{é}rez de los Heros, editor, 2020 (World Scientific) in 2018.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2020

Event reconstruction for KM3NeT/ORCA using convolutional neural networks

The KM3NeT research infrastructure is currently under construction at two locations in the Mediterranean Sea. The KM3NeT/ORCA water-Cherenkov neutrino detector off the French coast will instrument several megatons of seawater with photosensors. Its main objective is the determination of the neutrino mass ordering. This work aims at demonstrating the general applicability of deep convolutional neural networks to neutrino telescopes, using simulated datasets for the KM3NeT/ORCA detector as an example. To this end, the networks are employed to achieve reconstruction and classification tasks that constitute an alternative to the analysis pipeline presented for KM3NeT/ORCA in the KM3NeT Letter of Intent. They are used to infer event reconstruction estimates for the energy, the direction, and the interaction point of incident neutrinos. The spatial distribution of Cherenkov light generated by charged particles induced in neutrino interactions is classified as shower- or track-like, and the main background processes associated with the detection of atmospheric neutrinos are recognized. Performance comparisons to machine-learning classification and maximum-likelihood reconstruction algorithms previously developed for KM3NeT/ORCA are provided. It is shown that this application of deep convolutional neural networks to simulated datasets for a large-volume neutrino telescope yields competitive reconstruction results and performance improvements with respect to classical approaches.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2020

gSeaGen: the KM3NeT GENIE-based code for neutrino telescopes

The gSeaGen code is a GENIE-based application developed to efficiently generate high statistics samples of events, induced by neutrino interactions, detectable in a neutrino telescope. The gSeaGen code is able to generate events induced by all neutrino flavours, considering topological differences between track-type and shower-like events. Neutrino interactions are simulated taking into account the density and the composition of the media surrounding the detector. The main features of gSeaGen are presented together with some examples of its application within the KM3NeT project.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2019

Astro2020 White Paper State of the Profession: Intensity Interferometry

Recent advances in telescope design, photodetector efficiency, and high-speed electronic data recording and synchronization have created the observational capability to achieve unprecedented angular resolution for several thousand bright (m< 6) and hot (O/B/A) stars by means of a modern implementation of Stellar Intensity Interferometry (SII). This technology, when deployed on future arrays of large diameter optical telescopes, has the ability to image astrophysical objects with an angular resolution better than 40 μ arc-sec. This paper describes validation tests of the SII technique in the laboratory using various optical sensors and correlators, and SII measurements on nearby stars that have recently been completed as a technology demonstrator. The paper describes ongoing and future developments that will advance the impact and instrumental resolution of SII during the upcoming decade.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2019

A 3-D Projection Model for X-ray Dark-field Imaging

Talbot-Lau X-ray phase-contrast imaging is a novel imaging modality, which provides not only an X-ray absorption image, but also additionally a differential phase image and a dark-field image. The dark-field image is related to small angle scattering and has an interesting property when canning oriented structures: the recorded signal depends on the relative orientation of the structure in the imaging system. Exactly this property allows to draw conclusions about the orientation and to reconstruct the structure. However, the reconstruction is a complex, non-trivial challenge. A lot of research was conducted towards this goal in the last years and several reconstruction algorithms were proposed. A key step of the reconstruction algorithm is the inversion of a forward projection model. Up until now, only 2-D projection models are available, with effectively limit the scanning trajectory to a 2-D plane. To obtain true 3-D information, this limitation requires to combine several 2-D scans, which leads to quite complex, impractical acquisitions schemes. Furthermore, it is not possible with these models to use 3-D trajectories that might allow simpler protocols, like for example a helical trajectory. To address these limitations, we propose in this work a very general 3-D projection model. Our projection model defines the dark-field signal dependent on an arbitrarily chosen ray and sensitivity direction. We derive the projection model under the assumption that the observed scatter distribution has a Gaussian shape. We theoretically show the consistency of our model with more constrained existing 2-D models. Furthermore, we experimentally show the compatibility of our model with dark-field measurements of two matchsticks. We believe that this 3-D projection model is an important step towards more flexible trajectories and imaging protocols that are much better applicable in practice.

physics.med-ph↗

arXiv2018

Phase-Sensitive Region-of-Interest Computed Tomography

X-Ray Phase-Contrast Imaging (PCI) yields absorption, differential phase, and dark-field images. Computed Tomography (CT) of grating-based PCI can in principle provide high-resolution soft-tissue contrast. Recently, grating-based PCI took several hurdles towards clinical implementation by addressing, for example, acquisition speed, high X-ray energies, and system vibrations. However, a critical impediment in all grating-based systems lies in limits that constrain the grating diameter to few centimeters. In this work, we propose a system and a reconstruction algorithm to circumvent this constraint in a clinically compatible way. We propose to perform a phase-sensitive Region-of-Interest (ROI) CT within a full-field absorption CT. The biggest advantage of this approach is that it allows to correct for phase truncation artifacts, and to obtain quantitative phase values. Our method is robust, and shows high-quality results on simulated data and on a biological mouse sample. This work is a proof of concept showing the potential to use PCI in CT on large specimen, such as humans, in clinical applications.

physics.med-ph↗

arXiv2014

Detection of non-classical space-time correlations with a novel type of single-photon camera

During the last decades, multi-pixel detectors have been developed capable of registering single photons. The newly developed Hybrid Photon Detector camera has a remarkable property that it has not only spatial but also temporal resolution. In this work, we use this device for the detection of non-classical light from spontaneous parametric down-conversion and use two-photon correlations for the absolute calibration of its quantum efficiency.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2014

Three dimensional photograph of single electron tracks through a scintillator

The reconstruction of particle trajectories makes it possible to distinguish between different types of charged particles. In high-energy physics, where trajectories are rather long, large size trackers must be used to achieve sufficient position resolution. However, in low-background experiments tracks are rather short and three dimensional trajectories could only be resolved in time-projection chambers so far. For detectors of large volume and therefore large drift distances, which are inevitable for low-background experiments, this technique is limited by diffusion of charge carriers. In this work we present a "proof-of-principle" experiment for a new method for the three dimensional tracking of charged particles by scintillation light: We used a setup consisting of a scintillator, mirrors, lenses and a novel imaging device (the hybrid photo detector) in order to image two projections of electron tracks through the scintillator. We took data at the T-24 beam-line at DESY with relativistic electrons with a kinetic energy of 5 GeV and from this data successfully reconstructed their three dimensional propagetion path in the scintillator. With our setup we achieved a position resolution of about 28 mum in the best case.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2014

3D Particle Track Reconstrution in a Single Layer Cadmium-Telluride Hybrid Active Pixel Detector

In the past 20 years the search for neutrinoless double beta decay has driven many developements in all kind of detector technology. A new branch in this field are highly-pixelated semiconductor detectors - such as the CdTe-Timepix detectors. It compromises a cadmium-telluride sensor of 14 mm x 14 mm x 1 mm size with an ASIC which has 256 x 256 pixel of 55 \textmu m pixel pitch and can be used to obtain either spectroscopic or timing information in every pixel. In regular operation it can provide a 2D projection of particle trajectories; however, three dimensional trajectories are desirable for neutrinoless double beta decay and other applications. In this paper we present a method to obtain such trajectories. The method was developed and tested with simulations that assume some minor modifications to the Timepix ASIC. Also, we were able to test the method experimentally and in the best case achieved a position resolution of about 90 \textmu m with electrons of 4.4 GeV.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2013

Simultaneous maximum-likelihood reconstruction for x-ray grating based phase-contrast tomography avoiding intermediate phase retrieval

Phase-wrapping artifacts, statistical image noise and the need for a minimum amount of phase steps per projection limit the practicability of x-ray grating based phase-contrast tomography, when using filtered back projection reconstruction. For conventional x-ray computed tomography, the use of statistical iterative reconstruction algorithms has successfully reduced artifacts and statistical issues. In this work, an iterative reconstruction method for grating based phase-contrast tomography is presented. The method avoids the intermediate retrieval of absorption, differential phase and dark field projections. It directly reconstructs tomographic cross sections from phase stepping projections by the use of a forward projecting imaging model and an appropriate likelihood function. The likelihood function is then maximized with an iterative algorithm. The presented method is tested with tomographic data obtained through a wave field simulation of grating based phase-contrast tomography. The reconstruction results are in agreement with the expectations and proof the validity of the concept.

physics.med-ph↗

arXiv2013

Confronting Recent Results from Selected Direct and Indirect Dark Matter Searches and the Higgs Boson with Supersymmetric Models with Non-universal Gaugino Masses

In this paper we study a class of supersymmetric models with non-universal gaugino masses that arise from a mixture of SU(5) singlet and non-singlet representations, i.e. a combination of \textbf{1}, \textbf{24}, \textbf{75} and \textbf{200}. Based on these models we calculate the expected dark matter signatures within the linear combination \textbf{1} $\oplus$ \textbf{24} $\oplus$ \textbf{75} $\oplus$ \textbf{200}. We confront the model predictions with the detected boson as well as current experimental limits from selected indirect and direct dark matter search experiments ANTARES respective IceCube and XENON. We comment on the detection/exclusion capability of the future XENON 1t project. For the investigated parameter span we could not find a SU(5) singlet model that fulfils the Higgs mass and the relic density constraint. In contrary, allowing a mixture of \textbf{1} $\oplus$ \textbf{24} $\oplus$ \textbf{75} $\oplus$ \textbf{200} enables a number of models fulfilling these constraints.

hep-ph↗