The impact of clouds on image parameters in IACT at very high energies

Abstract

The effective observation time with the Cherenkov telescopes arrays is limited to clear sky conditions due to considerable absorption of Cherenkov light by the possible presence of clouds. However below the cloud altitude the primary particles with high energies can still produce enough Cherenkov photons to allow the detection by the large telescopes. In this paper, using the standard CORSIKA code, we investigate the changes of image parameters due to the absorption of Cherenkov radiation by the cloud (for γ-ray and proton showers with various energies – from 2 TeV to 100 TeV and from 10 TeV to 200 TeV, respectively). We consider the clouds with different transmissions located at various altitudes above the ground level (between 8 km and 3 km). We show that, for both simulated primary particles at fixed energy, the WIDTH and the DIST distributions are shifted towards larger values in the presence of clouds in comparison to the clear sky simulations. This shift decreases with the cloud altitude. The LENGTH distributions are shifted towards smaller values for images of primary γ-rays, while for primary protons this shift is not observed. We conclude that the large Cherenkov telescopes with large camera FOV could be used for observation of γ-ray showers with high energies in the presence of clouds.