The hybrid installation TAIGA: design, status and preliminary results

The hybrid installation TAIGA (Tunka Advanced Instrument for cosmic rays and Gamma Astronomy) is under construction to study cosmic and gamma rays at energies 10^13-10^18 eV. It will incorporate timing wide angle EAS Cherenkov array (TAIGA-HiSCORE) and number of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (TAIGA-IACT). The first stage of TAIGA will include ~100 wide angle non-imaging optical stations of TAIGA-HiSCORE, distributed over an area of ~1 km^2 and three imaging telescopes at a distance of 300-500 m from each other. A combined method will be used to distinguish gamma rays namely EAS parameters will be reconstructed by TAIGA-HiSCORE and a gamma-hadron separation will be carried out by TAIGA-IACT. With such an approach a hybrid detector will be built with a large area but with a relatively small number of telescopes.