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Description
Cherenkov light emission is widely used in numerous astroparticle physics experiments where the success was reached with the detection technique using the imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. The base of such experiments is that the Cherenkov light emitted from the particles of extensive air shower created by the primary gamma-ray is collected by a mirror reflector and then detected by a pixelized PMT camera.
SHALON are the imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes creating in the P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute for gamma-ray astronomy at the energies of 800 GeV to 100 TeV. It is located in the Tien-Shan mountains at the altitude of 3340 m a.s.l. The idea of enhancement of angular resolution and sensitivity to the gamma-rays was realized in SHALON telescopes by the number of technical solutions presented here, including the construction the widest field of view in the world of $> 8^\circ$. It allows to enlarge the experiment effective area $>10^5 m^2$, then to detect the weak gamma-ray fluxes $\le 10^{-13}cm^{-2}s^{-1}$ due to the high 99.93% rejection of background of cosmic rays and to reconstruct the source structure on the scales $\sim 20''$ as a result of the better determination of the gamma-ray arrival direction. The main technical characteristics of SHALON telescopes are starting to reproduce in the astroparticle projects to reach the high sensitivity and enlarge the energy rage up to 100 TeV.
SHALON experiment has been operating since 1992 and covers the wide astroparticle physics topics including an acceleration and origin of cosmic rays in supernova remnants, the physics of relativistic flaring objects like a black holes and active galactic nuclei as well as the long-term studies of the different type objects. SHALON has discovered of more than 30% of TeV energy gamma-ray sources in Northern Hemisphere and continues to produce the results on very high energy astrophysics.
