Thesis defense of Noah Biederbeck
- Defense
Unfolding the Spectrum of the Blazar Markarian 421 using Data from the First Large-Sized Telescope of the Cherenkov Telescope Array
The nature of acceleration processes of very-high-energy radiation in the universe is largely unsolved. To study these, Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes measure Cherenkov radiation produced by secondary particles in Extensive Air Showers. The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next generation of ground-based Cherenkov astronomy to be built in the coming years parts on La Palma, Spain and parts at Paranal Observatory, Chile. The first prototype telescope of CTA, the LST-1, was inaugurated in 2018 on La Palma, and has been in commissioning phase since. In this thesis, I develop a new automated analysis pipeline for analyses of point-like gamma-ray sources for LST-1 observations, using the workflow manager snakemake. I implement regularized unfolding in the open-source high-level gamma-ray analysis software Gammapy. I use the analysis pipeline and the unfolding implementation to analyze data of the blazar Markarian 421, creating an unfolded energy spectrum. The unfolded energy spectrum calculated in this thesis is compared to earlier analyses. It extends the measured range of the multi-wavelength energy spectrum of Markarian 421 to the highest energies.