Study on the optimization of the water Cherenkov detector array of the LHAASO project for surveying VHE gamma ray sources

It is prpopsed that a water Cherenkov detector array, LHAASO-WCDA, is to be built at Shangri-la, Yunnan Province, China. As one of the major components of the LHAASO project, the main purpose of it is to survey the northern sky for gamma ray sources in the energy range of 100 GeV-30 TeV. In order to design the water Cherenkov array efficiently to economize the budget, a Monte Carlo simulation is carried out. With the help of the simulation, the cost performance of different configurations of the array are obtained and compared with each other, serving as a guide for the more detailed design of the experiment in the next step.