A new analysis method for very high definition Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes as applied to the CAT telescope

A new method of shower-image analysis is presented which appears very powerful as applied to those Cherenkov Imaging Telescopes with very high definition imaging capability. It provides hadron rejection on the basis of a single cut on the image shape, and simultaneously determines the energy of the electromagnetic shower and the position of the shower axis with respect to the detector. The source location is Preprint submitted to Elsevier Preprint 31 March also reconstructed for each individual fl-ray shower, even with one single telescope, so for a point source the hadron rejection can be further improved. As an example, this new method is applied to data from the CAT (Cherenkov Array at Th'emis) imaging telescope, which has been operational since Autumn, 1996. Key words: Gamma-Ray Astronomy, Atmospheric Cherenkov detector 1 Introduction Most of the recent progress in ground-based fl-ray Astronomy has been obtained from Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (ACT) using the imaging techni..