Triggering of Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescopes: PMT trigger rates due to night-sky photons

Abstract

Imaging air Cherenkov telescopes are usually triggered on a coincidence of two or sometimes more pixels, with discriminator thresholds in excess of 20 photoelectrons applied for each pixel. These thresholds required to suppress night-sky background are significantly higher than expected on the basis of a Poisson distribution in the number of night-sky photoelectrons generated during the characteristic signal integration time. We studied noise trigger rates under controlled conditions using an artificial background light source. Large tails in the PMT amplitude response to single photoelectrons are identified as a dominant contribution to noise triggers. The rate of such events is very sensitive to PMT operating parameters.