Astrofisica Con Specchi A Tecnologia Replicante Italiana Research Articles

Galactic observatory science with the ASTRI Mini-Array at the Observatorio del Teide

The ASTRI (Astrofisica con Specchi a Tecnologia Replicante Italiana) Mini-Array will be composed of nine imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes at the Observatorio del Teide site. The array will be best suited for astrophysical observations in the 0.3–200 TeV range with an angular resolution of few arc-minutes and an energy resolution of 10-15%. A core-science programme in the first four years will be devoted to a limited number of key targets, addressing the most important open scientific questions in the very-high energy domain. At the same time, thanks to a wide field of view of about 10∘, ASTRI Mini-Array will observe many additional field sources, which will constitute the basis for the long-term observatory programme that will eventually cover all the accessible sky. In this paper, we review different astrophysical Galactic environments, e.g. pulsar wind nebulae, supernova remnants, and gamma-ray binaries, and show the results from a set of ASTRI Mini-Array simulations of some of these field sources made to highlight the expected performance of the array (even at large offset angles) and the important additional observatory science that will complement the core-science program.

ASTRI Mini-Array core science at the Observatorio del Teide

The ASTRI (Astrofisica con Specchi a Tecnologia Replicante Italiana) Project led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) is developing and will deploy at the Observatorio del Teide a mini-array (ASTRI Mini-Array) composed of nine telescopes similar to the small-size dual-mirror Schwarzschild-Couder telescope (ASTRI-Horn) currently operating on the slopes of Mt. Etna in Sicily. The ASTRI Mini-Array will surpass the current Cherenkov telescope array differential sensitivity above a few tera-electronvolt (TeV), extending the energy band well above hundreds of TeV. This will allow us to explore a new window of the electromagnetic spectrum, by convolving the sensitivity performance with excellent angular and energy resolution figures. In this paper we describe the Core Science that we will address during the first four years of operation, providing examples of the breakthrough results that we will obtain when dealing with current open questions, such as the acceleration of cosmic rays, cosmology and fundamental physics and the new window, for the TeV energy band, of the time-domain astrophysics.

The ASTRI Program

The ASTRI (Astrofisica con Specchi a Tecnologia Replicante Italiana) program was born as a collaborative international effort led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) to design and realize, within the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) framework, an end-to-end prototype of the Small-Sized Telescope (SST) in a dual-mirror configuration (2M). While the activities concerning the characterization of the prototype are under completion, the program entered a new phase. With the final aim of contributing at the production of the SST telescopes for the CTAO Southern site, we started the development of nine telescopes based on the evolution of the ASTRI prototype design to work as pathfinder for the CTAO. Furthermore, together with the CHEC (Compact High Energy Camera) collaboration, the ASTRI team presented a proposal, that will be evaluated with other proposals, to deliver to CTAO the complete set of SST telescopes.

Evaluation of the optical cross talk level in the SiPMs adopted in ASTRI SST-2M Cherenkov Camera using EASIROC front-end electronics

ASTRI (Astrofisica con Specchi a Tecnologia Replicante Italiana), is a flagship project of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research whose main goal is the design and construction of an end-to-end prototype of the Small Size of Telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array. The prototype, named ASTRI SST-2M, will adopt a wide field dual mirror optical system in a Schwarzschild-Couder configuration to explore the VHE range of the electromagnetic spectrum. The camera at the focal plane is based on Silicon Photo-Multipliers detectors which is an innovative solution for the detection astronomical Cherenkov light.This contribution reports some preliminary results on the evaluation of the optical cross talk level among the SiPM pixels foreseen for the ASTRI SST-2M camera.