Search for short bursts of gamma-ray emission in spark chamber data: application to COS-B

Abstract

We describe an analysis method aimed to the detection of short (<1000 s) bursts in the emission of gamma-ray sources using spark chamber data. The method utilizes a maximum likelihood technique which looks for accumulations of photons, compatible with the point spread function of the experiment, within the whole observing time and the field-of-view of the experiment. The method is tested on the COS-B archive data from observations of high latitude galactic regions where no galactic disc structure is present and upper limits on the existence of high energy gamma-ray bursts are given. The possible application of the technique to the GRO-EGRET is finally discussed.