Speaker
Description
Authors: Francesca Romana Pantaleo for the CTA SCT Project
Abstract:
The Schwarzschild Couder Telescope (SCT) is a dual mirror medium-sized
telescope proposed for the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO),
the next-generation very-high energy (from about 20 GeV to 300 TeV) gamma-ray observatory. The SCT design is composed by a dual-mirror optics anda high-resolution camera with a field of view (FoV) of 8 degrees squared, which will allow exceptional performance in terms of angular resolution and background rejection. A prototype telescope (pSCT) has been installed and is operating at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) in Arizona, USA. Its camera is partially equipped with silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) matrices produced by Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) and Hamamatsu. At the moment, the camera covers a FoV of 2.7°. The pSCT has detected the Crab Nebula with a statistical significance of 8.6 standard deviations. The upgrade of the pSCT focal plane is now ongoing, aimed to equip the full camera with upgraded sensors and electronics, enhancing the telescope field of view from the current 2.7° to the final 8°. In this presentation, an overview of the pSCT project and obtained results will be given, together with the camera upgrade status and expected performance.
