ترغب بنشر مسار تعليمي؟ اضغط هنا

Probing the IGMF with the next generation Cherenkov telescopes

87   0   0.0 ( 0 )
 نشر من قبل Mateo Fernandez Alonso
 تاريخ النشر 2018
  مجال البحث فيزياء
والبحث باللغة English




اسأل ChatGPT حول البحث

Intergalactic space is believed to contain non-zero magnetic fields (the Intergalactic Magnetic Field: IGMF) which at scales of Mpc would have intensities below $10^{-9}$ G. Very high energy (VHE $>$100 GeV) gamma rays coming from blazars can produce e$^+$e$^-$ pairs when interacting with the Extragalactic Background Light (EBL) and the Cosmic Microwave Background, generating an electromagnetic cascade of Mpc scale. The IGMF may produce a detectable broadening of the emission beam that could lead to important constrains both on the IGMF intensity and its coherence length. Using the Monte Carlo-based Elmag code, we simulate the electromagnetic cascade corresponding to two detected TeV sources: PKS 2155-304 visible from the South and H1426+428 visible from the North. Assuming an EBL model and intrinsic spectral properties of the sources we obtain the spectral and angular distribution of photons when they arrive at Earth. We include the response of the next generation Cherenkov telescopes by using simplified models for CTA (Cherenkov Telescope Array)-south and CTA-north based on a full simulation of each array performance. Combining the instrument properties with the simulated source fluxes, we calculate the telescope point spread function for null and non-null IGMF intensities and develop a method to test the statistical feasibility of detecting IGMF imprints by comparing the resulting angular distributions. Our results show that for the analysed source PKS 2155-304 corresponding to the southern site, CTA should be able to detect IGMF with intensities stronger than 10$^{-14.5}$G within an observation time of $sim$100 hours.

قيم البحث

اقرأ أيضاً

80 - V. V. Bugaev 2007
We estimate the limiting angular resolution and detection area for an array of 3 large-aperture Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes. We consider an idealized IACT system in order to understand the limitations imposed by the intrinsic nature of t he atmospheric showers and geometry of the detector configuration. The idealization includes the assumptions of a perfect optical system and the absence of the night sky background with the goal of finding the optimum camera geometry and array configuration independent of detailed assumptions about the telescope design. The showers are simulated using the ALTAI code for the altitude of 2700 m corresponding to one of possible future sites for a new northern-hemisphere array. The optimal design depends on the target energy range; for each energy we vary both the cell length (telescope spacing) and the image processing parameters in order to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio. We then present the resulting values of the detection area and the angular resolution for this energy dependent optimization. We discuss the dependence of these quantities on the field of view of the telescopes and pixel size of the camera.
Recently, there have been reports of six bright, dispersed bursts of coherent radio emission found in pulsar surveys with the Parkes Multi-beam Receiver. Not much is known about the progenitors of these bursts, but they are highly-energetic, and prob ably of extragalactic origin. Their properties suggest extreme environments and interesting physics, but in order to understand and study these events, more examples need to be found. Fortunately, the recent boom in radio astronomy means many next-generation radio telescopes are set to begin observing in the near future. In this paper we discuss the prospects of detecting short extragalactic bursts, in both beamformed and imaging data, using these instruments. We find that often the volume of space probed by radio surveys of fast transients is limited by the dispersion measure (DM) of the source, rather than its physical distance (although the two quantities are related). This effect is larger for low-frequency telescopes, where propagation effects are more prominent, but, their larger fields-of-view are often enough to compensate for this. Our simulations suggest that the low-frequency component of SKA1 could find an extragalactic burst every hour. We also show that if the sensitivity of the telescope is above a certain threshold, imaging surveys may prove more fruitful than beamformed surveys in finding these sorts of transients.
Motivated by the recent challenging results from TeV astronomy, the VHE INAF community asked a group of them to write this White Paper to summarize the status and future of Cherenkov telescopes for gamma-ray astronomy and the INAF perspectives in thi s field. This document wants to review both the scientific topics and potential developments of the field as well as to point out both the interests and the capacities (scientific and technical) of the VHE astrophysics community in INAF. It is aimed at identifying the scientific and technological areas where INAF should focus its efforts and resources so that Italian researchers can achieve (or maintain) a leading position in this field.
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a large collaborative effort aimed at the design and operation of an observatory dedicated to the VHE gamma-ray astrophysics in the energy range 30 GeV-100 TeV, which will improve by about one order of magnitude the sensitivity with respect to the current major arrays (H.E.S.S., MAGIC, and VERITAS). In order to achieve such improved performance, for both the northern and southern CTA sites, four units of 23m diameter Large Size Telescopes (LSTs) will be deployed close to the centre of the array with telescopes separated by about 100m. A larger number (about 25 units) of 12m Medium Size Telescopes (MSTs, separated by about 150m), will cover a larger area. The southern site will also include up to 24 Schwarzschild-Couder dual-mirror medium-size Telescopes (SCTs) with the primary mirror diameter of 9.5m. Above a few TeV, the Cherenkov light intensity is such that showers can be detected even well outside the light pool by telescopes significantly smaller than the MSTs. To achieve the required sensitivity at high energies, a huge area on the ground needs to be covered by Small Size Telescopes (SSTs) with a FOV of about 10 deg and an angular resolution of about 0.2 deg, making the dual-mirror configuration very effective. The SST sub-array will be composed of 50-70 telescopes with a mirror area of about 5-10 square meters and about 300m spacing, distributed across an area of about 10 square kilometers. We will focus on the innovative solution for the optical design of the medium and small size telescopes based on a dual-mirror configuration. This layout will allow us to reduce the dimension and the weight of the camera at the focal plane of the telescope, to adopt SiPMs as light detectors thanks to the reduced plate-scale, and to have an optimal imaging resolution on a wide FOV.
Cherenkov telescopes play a major role in the growth of the TeV Astronomy which, in 20 years, has reached the status of an important branch of Astrophysics, because of the observations of the violent, non thermal processes in the extreme band of the electromagnetic spectrum above several tens of GeV up to several tens of TeV. About one hundred extragalactic sources (Active Galactic Nuclei, blazars, and radiogalaxies) and Galactic sources (shell supernovae remnants, pulsar wind nebulae, isolated pulsars, X-ray binaries, and unidentified sources) have been detected so far. In the near future, an ambitious new array, the Cherenkov Compton Telescope (CTA) will substitute the present Cherenkov telescopes arrays. CTA is designed as an array of many (50-100) Cherenkov telescopes operated in stereo mode. CTA will allow to gain a factor of 10 in sensitivity with respect to the present arrays such as H.E.S.S., MAGIC, and VERITAS. Moreover, CTA will connect the TeV to the GeV energy band covered by space missions such as Fermi and AGILE, and will also explore the highest energy region of the electromagnetic spectrum up to several hundreds of TeV.
التعليقات
جاري جلب التعليقات جاري جلب التعليقات
سجل دخول لتتمكن من متابعة معايير البحث التي قمت باختيارها
mircosoft-partner

هل ترغب بارسال اشعارات عن اخر التحديثات في شمرا-اكاديميا