Welcome to pyirf’s documentation!

pyirf is a prototype for the generation of Instrument Response Functions (IRFs) for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). The package is being developed and tested by members of the CTA consortium and is a spin-off of the analog sub-process of the pipeline protopype.

Its main features are currently to

  • find the best cutoff in gammaness/score, to discriminate between signal and background, as well as the angular cut to obtain the best sensitivity for a given amount of observation time and a given template for the source of interest (Cut Optimization)

  • compute the instrument response functions, effective area, point spread function and energy resolution (Instrument Response Functions)

  • estimate the sensitivity of the array (Sensitivity),

with plans to extend its capabilities to reach the requirements of the future observatory.

The source code is hosted on a GitHub repository, to which this documentation is linked.

Warning

This is not yet stable code, so expect large and rapid changes.

Citing this software

If you use this software for a publication, please cite our publication and the software DOI published to Zenodo that corresponds to the version of the software you are using:

At this point, our latest publication is the 2023 ICRC proceeding, which you can cite using the following bibtex entry, especially if using functionalities from pyirf.interpolation:

@inproceedings{pyirf-icrc-2023,
  author = {Dominik, Rune Michael and Linhoff, Maximilian and Sitarek, Julian},
  title = {Interpolation of Instrument Response Functions for the Cherenkov Telescope Array in the Context of pyirf},
  usera = {for the CTA Consortium},
  doi = {10.22323/1.444.0703},
  booktitle = {Proceedings, 38th International Cosmic Ray Conference},
  year=2023,
  volume={444},
  number={618},
  location={Nagoya, Japan},
}

Indices and tables