The Cherenkov Telescope Array is the next-generation observatory for ground- based gamma-ray astronomy. With more than 100 telescopes equipped with state- of-the-art technologies, it will provide a new view of the sky at energies between a few GeV and up to 300 TeV. This contribution will give an overview and status of the project and will inform about Australia’s involvement in the project....
A key science focus of CTA will be the search for the Milky Way's extreme accelerators, the so-called PeVatrons. These are astrophysical objects accelerating cosmic rays to PeV energies and beyond. The HESS Galactic Plane Survey has revealed a number of potential PeVatrons in addition to the inner Galactic Centre region. This talk will outline the CTA's potential to explore uncharted territory...
Gamma-ray supernova remnants are thought to be primary accelerators of cosmic-ray protons up to knee energy. Over the last two decades, we have learned that interactions between SNR's shock waves and interstellar neutral gas play a key element in understanding the origin of cosmic-ray protons and their gamma-ray radiation (e.g., Fukui et al. 2003, 2012, 2017; Sano et al. 2017, 2019; Maxted et...
The Galaxy's supermassive black hole is a hundred times closer than any other massive singularity. It is surrounded by a highly unstable gas disk so why is the black hole so peaceful at the present time? This mystery has led to a flurry of models in order to explain why Sgr A* is radiating far below (1 part in 10^8) the Eddington accretion limit. But has this always been so? Evidence is...
The Cherenkov Telescope Ring is an idea for a network of Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescopes around the globe. This would allow for 24-hour coverage of the very-high-energy gamma-ray sky for follow-up and long-term observations. This presentation will introduce the project and give an overview of the scientific motivations, relevant linkages, and current efforts being put forth in Australia.
In this talk I will present an update on some key projects looking at the ISM towards TeV gamma-ray sources. A focus will be on the galactic centre region, the TeV-bright SNR RXJ1713.7-3946, the extreme stellar cluster Westerlund1 and supernova remnants in the LMC. I will also outline other longer term projects such as GALPROP modeling of the diffuse galactic gamma-ray emission, and how all of...
I will present an overview of the interstellar medium surrounding the mysterious HESS source; HESS J1804-216, including data from the Mopra CO survey and the Southern Galactic Plane Survey of HI. This will include a focus on understanding the origin of cosmic rays from HESS J1804-216.
I will discuss progress in mapping the atomic and diffuse molecular components of the ISM in the Milky Way, with particular focus on observing and correcting for the so-called "dark ISM". It is now known that a significant fraction of the Milky Way ISM resides in this "dark" phase, usually defined as a mixture of cold, optically thick HI and diffuse molecular hydrogen with densities that are...
- CTA Consortium membership categories
- Future CTA funding
- CTA Linkages with optical/radio
- CTA Related Meetings
- Other projects in TeV gamma-ray astronomy
- Astroparticle physics in Australia
The Uni of Sydney has played a pioneering role in the development of air Cherenkov detection going back to the 1950's and leading to possibly the first TeV gamma-ray signal recorded from Cen-A in 1975. I'll present a brief look at these results.
Fast Radio Bursts are extragalactic radio sources of 10s of microsecond to 10s millisecond durations. Thousands appear to occur daily to the sensitivity limit of the Parkes radio telescope, the facility that discovered them in 2007. After a decade of searching, the number of known FRBs is approaching 100 events, with their origins remaining obscure. Parkes has been joined in the hunt for FRBs...
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are powerful extragalactic bursts of
radio waves with millisecond duration. Their origin is a mystery, with dozens of theories, from supramassive magnetars to lensing by astrophysical plasmas, being proposed to explain their extreme energies. Even basic questions surrounding FRBs, such as "do they all repeat?",
"do they originate in the near or distant universe?", and...
I will discuss the history, structure and strategy behind our
all-wavelength, multi-messenger Deeper, Wider, Faster program (DWF) to detect and study transients with millisecond-to-hours duration in real time. Fast transients include events such as fast radio bursts (FRBs), supernova shock breakouts, gamma-ray bursts, Type Ia supernova collisions with companion stars, X-ray bursts, flare...
It has been said that there is nothing as useless as a radio
source. Certainly, the science is greatly magnified if the radio sources can be cross-identified with other multi-messenger catalogues such as CTA, and redshifts measured or estimated. But it is non-trivial to do so for the catalogues of tens of millions of sources that will be generated by
next-generation radio continuum surveys,...
I will present update on our ongoing project where we compare our latest generation of HESS images with MWA. Specifically, I will highlight 4 papers that we have submitted in this area over the past few months. Several new Galactic SNRs have been discovered as well as several candidates are now confirmed.
MeV gamma-ray astronomy has given the astronomy community significant insights into the physical processes that underlie stellar nucleosynthesis, solar flares and cosmic ray propagation since the first instruments sensitive to MeV photons were developed during the 1960s. Modern space-based observatories such as the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory and INTEGRAL have yielded the first observations...
The Local Group offers the best opportunity to trace the dark matter properties of galaxies, directly confronting our cosmological models. Whilst the dynamical evidence points to the presence of abundant dark matter throughout the Local Group, many of its apparent properties are in conflict with our understanding of galaxy evolution. In this talk, I will review our present knowledge, and point...
There's a lot of confusion about the plausibility of the existence of Weekly Interacting Massive Particles in the broader particle astrophysics community. In this talk I review the most popular WIMP candidates and the most rigorous experimental limits in them. I argue that the simplest WIMP candidates are not only alive but also in the potential reach of CTA.
I will argue that topologically stable particle-like objects, which can be described as electroweak monopoles, are the inevitable prediction of the minimal Standard Model. Furthermore, their existence provides new CP violating phases and new baryon number violating interactions in the Standard Model. These monopoles must have been produced non-thermally during the electroweak phase transition...
