Algorithms for Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes

Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) are complex instruments for ground-based γ-ray astronomy and require sophisticated software for the handling of the measured data. In part one of this work, a modular and efficient software framework is presented that allows to run the complete chain from reading the raw data from the telescopes, over calibration, background reduction and reconstruction, to the sky maps. Several new methods and fast algorithms have been developed and are presented. Furthermore, it was found that the currently used file formats in IACT experiments are not optimal in terms of flexibility and I/O speed. Therefore, in part two a new file format was developed, which allows to store the camera and subsystem data in all its complexity. It offers fast lossy and lossless compression optimized for the high data rates of IACT experiments. Since many other scientific experiments also struggle with enormous data rates, the compression algorithm was further optimized and generalized, and is now able to efficiently compress the data of other experiments as well. Finally, for those who prefer to store their data as ASCII text, a fast I/O scheme is presented, including the necessary compression and conversion routines. Although the second part of this thesis is very technical, it might still be interesting for scientists designing an experiment with high data rates