SST-GATE: A dual mirror telescope for the Cherenkov Telescope Array


Zech, A, Amans, J-P, Blake, S, Boisson, C, Costille, C, De-Frondat, F, Dournaux, J-L, Dumas, D, Fasola, G, Greenshaw, T ORCID: 0000-0003-1897-5810 et al (show 8 more authors) (2013) SST-GATE: A dual mirror telescope for the Cherenkov Telescope Array. Proceedings of the 33rd International Cosmic Rays Conference, ICRC 2013, 2013-O.

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Abstract

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be the world's first open observatory for very high energy gamma-rays. Around a hundred telescopes of different sizes will be used to detect the Cherenkov light that results from gamma-ray induced air showers in the atmosphere. Amongst them, a large number of Small Size Telescopes (SST), with a diameter of about 4 m, will assure an unprecedented coverage of the high energy end of the electromagnetic spectrum (above ~1TeV to beyond 100 TeV) and will open up a new window on the non-thermal sky. Several concepts for the SST design are currently being investigated with the aim of combining a large field of view (~9 degrees) with a good resolution of the shower images, as well as minimizing costs. These include a Davies-Cotton configuration with a Geiger-mode avalanche photodiode (GAPD) based camera, as pioneered by FACT, and a novel and as yet untested design based on the Schwarzschild-Couder configuration, which uses a secondary mirror to reduce the plate-scale and to allow for a wide field of view with a light-weight camera, e.g. using GAPDs or multi-anode photomultipliers. One objective of the GATE (Gamma-ray Telescope Elements) programme is to build one of the first Schwarzschild-Couder prototypes and to evaluate its performance. The construction of the SST-GATE prototype on the campus of the Paris Observatory in Meudon is under way. We report on the current status of the project and provide details of the opto-mechanical design of the prototype, the development of its control software, and simulations of its expected performance.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: In Proceedings of the 33rd International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2013), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). All CTA contributions at arXiv:1307.2232
Uncontrolled Keywords: astro-ph.IM, astro-ph.IM
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 19 Oct 2017 09:59
Last Modified: 19 Jan 2023 06:52
Related URLs:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3010431
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