@article{ShilonKrausBuecheleetal.2018,
  author    = {Shilon, I. and Kraus, M. and B{\"u}chele, M. and Egberts, Kathrin and Fischer, Tobias and Holch, Tim Lukas and Lohse, T. and Schwanke, U. and Steppa, Constantin Beverly and Funk, Stefan},
  title     = {Application of deep learning methods to analysis of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes data},
  series = {Astroparticle physics},
  volume    = {105},
  journal   = {Astroparticle physics},
  publisher = {Elsevier},
  address   = {Amsterdam},
  issn      = {0927-6505},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.astropartphys.2018.10.003},
  pages     = {44 -- 53},
  year      = {2018},
  abstract  = {Ground based gamma-ray observations with Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) play a significant role in the discovery of very high energy (E > 100 GeV) gamma-ray emitters. The analysis of IACT data demands a highly efficient background rejection technique, as well as methods to accurately determine the position of its source in the sky and the energy of the recorded gamma-ray. We present results for background rejection and signal direction reconstruction from first studies of a novel data analysis scheme for IACT measurements. The new analysis is based on a set of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) applied to images from the four H.E.S.S. phase-I telescopes. As the H.E.S.S. cameras pixels are arranged in a hexagonal array, we demonstrate two ways to use such image data to train CNNs: by resampling the images to a square grid and by applying modified convolution kernels that conserve the hexagonal grid properties. The networks were trained on sets of Monte-Carlo simulated events and tested on both simulations and measured data from the H.E.S.S. array. A comparison between the CNN analysis to current state-of-the-art algorithms reveals a clear improvement in background rejection performance. When applied to H.E.S.S. observation data, the CNN direction reconstruction performs at a similar level as traditional methods. These results serve as a proof-of-concept for the application of CNNs to the analysis of events recorded by IACTs. (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V.},
  language  = {en}
}