The Use of Conditional Variational Autoencoders for Simulation of EAS Images from IACTs

Abstract

Imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes are used to record images of extensive area showers caused by high-energy particles colliding with the upper atmosphere. The images are analyzed to determine events’ physical parameters, such as the type and the energy of the primary particles. The distributions of some of the physical parameters can be used as well, for example, to determine the properties of a gamma ray source. The key problem of any experiment is the calibration of experimental data. For this purpose, Monte Carlo simulated data with known values of the physical parameters are used. The main disadvantage of this method is its extremely high requirements for computing resources and the large amount of time spent on modelling. In this paper, we use an alternative approach: Cherenkov telescope images are simulated with conditional variational autoencoders. We compare the characteristics of both the individual images and their Hillas parameter distributions with those of the images generated by the Monte Carlo method.