Technological developments toward the small size telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array

摘要

In the last two decades a new window for ground-based high energy astrophysics has been opened. This explores theenergy band from about 100 GeV to 10 TeV by making use of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs).Research in Very High Energy (VHE) gamma-ray astronomy is progressing rapidly and, thanks to the newest facilitiessuch as MAGIC, HESS and VERITAS, astronomers and particle physicists are obtaining data with far-reachingimplications for theoretical models.The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the ambitious international next-generation facility for gamma-ray astronomyand astrophysics that aims to provide a sensitivity of a factor of 10 higher than current instruments, extend the energyband coverage from below 50 GeV to above 100 TeV, and improve significantly the energy and angular resolution toallow precise imaging, photometry and spectroscopy of sources. To achieve this, an extended array composed of nearly100 telescopes of large, medium and small dimensions is under development. Those telescopes will be optimized tocover the low, intermediate and high energy regimes, respectively.In this paper, we focus our attention on the Small Size Telescopes (SSTs): these will be installed on the CTA southernhemisphere site and will cover an area of up to 10 kmsup2/sup. The energy range over which the SSTs will be sensitive is fromaround 1 TeV to several hundreds of TeV. The status of the optical and mechanical designs of these telescopes ispresented and discussed. Comments are also made on the focal surface instruments under development for the SSTs.© (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.