Speaker
Description
The Southern Wide field of view Gamma ray Observatory is a proposed next-generation ground-based array to search for high energy gamma-ray sources in the Southern hemisphere sky. SWGO will be capable of mapping the Southern sky from several 100 GeVs to a few PeV, looking for extended sources and transients, providing complementary observations to existing ground-based surveys and to next-generation imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. Additional synergies are expected in the study of transient phenomena within the multi-wavelength and multi-messenger framework, where SWGO will contribute through all-sky monitoring and real-time alert dissemination.
The array will be located in Pampa La Bola, Chile, inside the Atacama Astronomical Park, at an altitude of 4770 m a.s.l. and will be based on Water Cherenkov Detectors. The array will have a central region (of about 160 m radii) with high fill factor (60-70%) studying the energy range from hundreds of GeV to tens of TeV, and an external area of total surface 1 km^2 with a lower fill factor (2-4%) covering the energy range from tens of TeV to few PeV.
We will present the current status of the project and its development timeline and discuss the baseline design and projected performance. In the near future SWGO is expected to have a transformational impact on studies of galactic particle acceleration and transport, transient phenomena, and physics beyond the Standard Model.