2013/07/18 by Giovanni Pareschi, G. Agnetta, Pareschi, G. +211
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex) #Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det) #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) #Particle Accelerators and Free-Electron Lasers #Particle Detector Development and Performance
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1307.4962
openalex publication_date 2013/07/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In this paper, the development of the dual mirror Small Size Telescopes (SST) for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is reviewed. Up to 70 SST, with a primary mirror diameter of 4 m, will be produced and installed at the CTA southern site. These will allow investigation of the gamma-ray sky at the highest energies accessible to CTA, in the range from about 1 TeV to 300 TeV. The telescope presented in this contribution is characterized by two major innovations: the use of a dual mirror Schwarzschild-Couder configuration and of an innovative camera using as sensors either multi-anode photomultipliers (MAPM) or silicon photomultipliers (SiPM). The reduced plate-scale of the telescope, achieved with the dual-mirror optics, allows the camera to be compact (40 cm in diameter), and low-cost. The camera, which has about 2000 pixels of size 6x6 mm2, covers a field of view of 10°. The dual mirror telescopes and their cameras are being developed by three consortia, ASTRI (Astrofisica con Specchi a Tecnologia Replicante Italiana, Italy/INAF), GATE (Gamma-ray Telescope Elements, France/Paris Observ.) and CHEC (Compact High Energy Camera, universities in UK, US and Japan) which are merging their efforts in order to finalize an end-to-end design that will be constructed for CTA. A number of prototype structures and cameras are being developed in order to investigate various alternative designs. In this contribution, these designs are presented, along with the technological solutions under study.