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Introducing the CTA concept
(2013)
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a new observatory for very high-energy (VHE) gamma rays. CTA has ambitions science goals, for which it is necessary to achieve full-sky coverage, to improve the sensitivity by about an order of magnitude, to span about four decades of energy, from a few tens of GeV to above 100 TeV with enhanced angular and energy resolutions over existing VHE gamma-ray observatories. An international collaboration has formed with more than 1000 members from 27 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and North and South America. In 2010 the CTA Consortium completed a Design Study and started a three-year Preparatory Phase which leads to production readiness of CTA in 2014. In this paper we introduce the science goals and the concept of CTA, and provide an overview of the project.
Ground-based gamma-ray astronomy has had a major breakthrough with the impressive results obtained using systems of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. Ground-based gamma-ray astronomy has a huge potential in astrophysics, particle physics and cosmology. CTA is an international initiative to build the next generation instrument, with a factor of 5-10 improvement in sensitivity in the 100 GeV-10 TeV range and the extension to energies well below 100 GeV and above 100 TeV. CTA will consist of two arrays (one in the north, one in the south) for full sky coverage and will be operated as open observatory. The design of CTA is based on currently available technology. This document reports on the status and presents the major design concepts of CTA.
Prospects for Cherenkov Telescope Array Observations of the Young Supernova Remnant RX J1713.7-3946
(2017)
We perform simulations for future Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) observations of RX J1713.7-3946, a young supernova remnant (SNR) and one of the brightest sources ever discovered in very high energy (VHE) gamma rays. Special attention is paid to exploring possible spatial (anti) correlations of gamma rays with emission at other wavelengths, in particular X-rays and CO/H I emission. We present a series of simulated images of RX J1713.7-3946 for CTA based on a set of observationally motivated models for the gamma-ray emission. In these models, VHE gamma rays produced by high-energy electrons are assumed to trace the nonthermal X-ray emission observed by XMM-Newton, whereas those originating from relativistic protons delineate the local gas distributions. The local atomic and molecular gas distributions are deduced by the NANTEN team from CO and H I observations. Our primary goal is to show how one can distinguish the emission mechanism(s) of the gamma rays (i.e., hadronic versus leptonic, or a mixture of the two) through information provided by their spatial distribution, spectra, and time variation. This work is the first attempt to quantitatively evaluate the capabilities of CTA to achieve various proposed scientific goals by observing this important cosmic particle accelerator.
When a gravitationally lensed source crosses a caustic, a pair of images is created or destroyed. We calculate the mean number of such pairs of microimages <n> for a given macroimage of a gravitationally lensed point source due to microlensing by the stars of the lensing galaxy. This quantity was calculated by Wambsganss, Witt, and Schneider in 1992 for the case of zero external shear, ;=0, at the location of the macroimage. Since in realistic lens models a nonzero shear is expected to be induced by the lensing galaxy, we extend this calculation to a general value of ;. We find a complex behavior of <n> as a function of ; and the normalized surface mass density in stars, ;*. Specifically, we find that at high magnifications, where the average total magnification of the macroimage is <;>=|(1-;*)2- ;2|-1>>1, <n> becomes correspondingly large and is proportional to <;>. The ratio <n>/ <;> is largest near the line ;=1-;*, where the magnification <;> becomes infinite, and its maximal value is 0.306. We compare our semianalytic results for <n> with the results of numerical simulations and find good agreement. We find that the probability distribution for the number of extra microimage pairs is reasonably described by a Poisson distribution with a mean value of <n> and that the width of the macroimage magnification distribution tends to be largest for <n>~1.