An Advanced Analysis Technique for Transient Searches in Wide-Field Gamma-Ray Observatories

Authors:
M. F. Morales,
D. A. Williams,
T. DeYoung

Comments: Submitted to Astroparticle Physics, 19 pages 5 figures

Wide-field gamma-ray telescopes typically have highly variable event-by-event
resolution which leads to a number of unique and challenging analysis
requirements — particularly when conducting transient searches over multiple
time scales. By generalizing the ideas of the Gaussian weighting analysis to
point-spread functions of arbitrary shape and the regime of Poisson statistics,
an efficient analysis which uses the event-by-event resolution is developed
with a sensitivity similar to that of a well-implemented maximum likelihood
analysis. In this development, the effect of a number of different
approximations on the sensitivity and speed of the final analysis can be easily
determined and tuned to the particular application. The analysis method is
particularly well suited to transient detection in wide field-of-view gamma-ray
observatories, and is currently used for the 40 s — 3 hour transient search in
the Milagro observatory.

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