A Multi-purpose Cosmic Ray Experiment: The LHAASO Project

by Prof. Zhen Cao (The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) Collaboration Institute of High Energy Physics, Beijing, China)

Tuesday 22 May 2012, 14:00 → 16:00 Europe/Rome

Aula Conversi (Dip. di Fisica - Edificio G. Marconi)

In 21st century, one of the fundamental scientific problems is the origin of the cosmic rays which were discovered 100 years ago. One of the successful approaches is the VHE gamma ray astronomy that was started with the discovery of the Crab Nebula as a source of the gamma rays above 1 TeV at 1989. Above 100 VHE gamma ray sources are discovered, mainly by using the pointing Cherenkov telescopes such as HESS, MAGIC and VERITAS. To keep the momentum of the discovery power, a full sky survey with wide field of view and full duty cycle is necessary. Struggling on developing a right survey technology, the Chinese group together with its Italian and Japanese collaborators has successfully carried out two experiments, AS and ARGO-YBJ in last 20 years and has proposed the LHAASO project now. In this presentation, the scientific achievements of ARGO-YBJ will be summarized as an indication of what will be possibly achieved by LHAAS! O that is a factor of 30 more sensitive at low energies and 300 more sensitive at high energies. The scientific prospects, detector performance and prototyping status will be reported as well. A Multi-purpose Cosmic Ray Experiment: The LHAASO Project Zhen Cao On behalf of The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) Collaboration Institute of High Energy Physics, Beijing.