CTAO | Australia Meeting #1 2025

15 Apr 2025, 08:00 → 16 Apr 2025, 18:00 Australia/Sydney

CTA-Oz Meeting #1 2025

(April 15-16)

 

CTAO recently passed some major milestones this year with the formation of the CTAO-ERIC in January, and the first ERIC Council meeting in Feb. This meeting will provide further updates on the status of the CTAO, and related key activities such as:

CTAO data challenge, SST construction, Key Science Project engagement, CTA-Pol for optical astronomy, Australia's formal engagement in CTAO (3rd Party).

For ongoing updates on the CTAO, please visit the CTAO news website for more details

Venue: Mt Stromlo, Canberra:

Tuesday - CSO Common Room

Wednesday: Lecture Theatre

Zoom access: Zoom - https://adelaide.zoom.us/j/81631661214?pwd=N1ZGV1hKREZ3eGRZL3pQem80VFhjdz09

Please note that there is no registration fee for this event.

Suggested Hotels: QT Hotel, Breakfree Capital Tower, Peppers Gallery, Ovolo Nishi

Transport: We will organise bus transport to/from Mt. Stromlo departing somewhere near the QT Hotel - To be updated.

Scientific Organising Committee

Gavin Rowell, Uni Adelaide, Australia
Sabrina Einecke, Uni Adelaide, Australia
 

Local Organising Committee

Mark Krumholz, ANU
Roland Crocker, ANU
Gavin Rowell, Uni Adelaide
Sabrina Einecke, Uni Adelaide
Paddy McGee, Uni Adelaide
 

Tuesday 15 April

09:00 Bus from QT Hotel

1 CTAO Status and Updates

I will present a brief status report on CTAO.

Speaker: Dr Gavin Rowell (School of Physical Sciences, University of Adelaide)

gpr-CTAStatus.pdf

2 Update on AAL and related support of CTAO

Speaker: Alexander Cooke (Astronomy Australia)

11:00 Tea Break

3 An update on various things...

Speaker: Miroslav Filipovic (Western Sydney University)

4 SKAO Update

I will give an update on recent SKAO activities since the last CTAO | Australia meeting in late 2024.

Speaker: Jess Broderick (SKAO)

12:30 Lunch

5 Flaring Stars as Possible TeV Sources

Gamma-ray emission from stellar activity, usually generated from relativistic particles, plays an important role in the space weather and habitability of exoplanets. Young dwarf stars of K-type and later are far more magnetically active than the Sun, yet only one other isolated main sequence star (TVLM 513-46546) apart from the Sun is detected in gamma-rays. Stacking surveys of radio, optical and X-ray flares of K-type and later dwarf stars using Fermi-LAT data during the flares placed a sensitive upper limit of their gamma-ray emission. The gamma-ray emission from stellar flares likely originates from the decay of neutral pions. They are generated by relativistic protons interacting within the stellar atmosphere. If the protons are accelerated to TeV energies, this emission mechanism might be able to produce TeV gamma-rays. This work aims to verify the detectability of stellar flares in CTA using existing observations from Fermi-LAT. Furthermore, it will serve as a guideline to determine which stars, based on their distance and flare events, can be detected in CTA.

Speaker: Yuzhe Song (Swinburne University)

6 Cosmic rays in the CGM and IGM

I will discuss modelling work we are embarked on that considers injection, transport, energy loss, and radiation of cosmic rays in the low density plasma trapped in dark matter halos surrounding galaxies, galaxy groups, and galaxy clusters. I will show that we can neither blithely ignore the hadronic gamma-ray emission from these particles nor their potential gas dynamical implications. The latter follows from the fact that over a Hubble time, the dark matter halo of an L_star galaxy can accumulate a total energy in ~GeV cosmic rays comparable to the CGM gas binding energy.

Speaker: Roland Crocker (Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Australian National University)

7 Indirect Detection of Ultra-Heavy Dark Matter Candidates: Potential for the CTAO

Astronomical and Cosmological data irrefutably point towards an invisible matter component of the universe 5 times denser than the visible matter. The masses of particle physics dark matter masses can span over 30 orders of magnitude. On the heavy dark matter mass, high energy gamma ray telescopes provide an unique opportunity to probe the parameter space of well-motivated models. I will review the potential of CTA to discover and probe heavy dark matter models, including the conclusions of the Snowmass ultra-heavy dark matter working group.

Speaker: Dipan Sengupta (University of New South Wales)

15:00 Tea Break

8 Update on reconstruction performance with truncated images

Speaker: Ms Violet Harvey (The University of Adelaide)

ctao-australia_meeting-2025-04.pdf

9 CTAO SST Commissioning: Progress with QCAM

The Small Sized Telescopes (SST) of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory are one of three designs to be used in the array, specifically focused on observing TeV gamma-rays. A partial prototype of the final camera design for these telescopes (QCAMi) has been built, and will undergo on-sky testing in Tenerife this June/July. As part of this commissioning process, waveform data is produced in a controlled lab environment by flashing the camera with a laser. This data can then be analysed for anomalies, processed to assess charge extraction performance, and compared to the existing SST simulation configuration. In this presentation, I will show my progress in processing and analysing QCAMi data, and outline future steps of the commissioning process.

Speaker: Simon Lee (School of Physical Sciences, University of Adelaide)

2025-04_CTAO_Australia_Simon.pdf

10 Update on MSP with CTAO

Speaker: Hayden James (The University of Adelaide)

CTAO_MSP_Hayden_James_2.pdf

11 Update: Plan for PhD Project

Speaker: Scarlet Betterman (The University of Adelaide)

CTA_convolutional background seperation.pdf

12 On the Transients Handler for the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory

The Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) is a next-generation gamma-ray observatory in both the Southern (Paranal, Chile) and Northern Hemisphere (La Palma, Spain) and will consist of up to 100 imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. With sensitivity far exceeding current facilities, CTAO will provide detailed measurements of gamma rays from GeV up to a few 100s of TeV. CTAO has a nominal field of view of ~10º and will rely on external alerts from observatories such as IceCube (neutrinos), Fermi-LAT (GeV gamma rays), LIGO (gravitational waves (GWs)) or the upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory (optical) to trigger observations of targets of opportunity (ToOs). The Transients Handler (TH) is a subsystem of the Array Control and Data Acquisition that will provide the means of handling alerts and schedule follow-up observations. The TH is responsible for (i) filtering of thousands of internal and external alerts per night, (ii) processing of alerts according to the corresponding observation proposal to determine the optimal observation schedule with minimum interruptions to observations and (iii) broadcasting of events detected by CTAO to external facilities. In this work, we will discuss the architecture of the Transients Handler, its latest improvements and future updates.

Speaker: Tiffany Collins (University of Potsdam)

TH_2024_CTAO_presentation.pdf

13 Update: Deconvolution of Fermi Maps and Determination of Escape Energy

Speaker: Jemma Pilossof (The University of Adelaide)

14 Update: ISM Modelling

Speaker: Imogen Barnsley (The University)

18:00 Bus to QT Hotel

Dinner - Bicicletta Restaurant (Peppers Gallery Hotel)

Bibicletta restaurant

Wednesday 16 April

09:00 Bus from QT Hotel

15 CTAO funding plans

A discussion of LIEF #4 funds.

Speaker: Dr Gavin Rowell (School of Physical Sciences, University of Adelaide)

gpr-CTAFunding.pdf

gpr-CTAFunding.pdf

16 CTAO Consortium MoU

Quick updates on MoU arrangements for the Consortium

Speaker: Nick Tothill (Western Sydney University)

11:00 Tea Break

17 StarFISH and the CTAO: Using 7mm maps of the Galactic Plane to search for counterparts of Gamma-Ray sources

From ATCA project proposal C3145: "We are building on Australia’s rich tradition of spectral line legacy surveys to deliver a 7-mm dense gas survey of the Fourth Quadrant Galactic Plane in multiple molecular spectral lines and continuum emission. Using ATCA autocorrelation data, the "Full Strength" MALT45 will address a wide range of astrophysical challenges, including directly testing competing theories of massive star formation, mapping the dense gas structure of the Milky Way through to the far side of the Disk, and (combined with cutting-edge gamma ray data from forthcoming multi-national Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory) constraining the location and nature of the Galaxy's cosmic ray accelerators. The survey will provide lasting legacy value to the community, via both the science carried out by the survey team, and the data products it delivers. By locking in key measurements in our "astronomical backyard", the project will provide a crucial astrophysical template that will allow us to interpret future sensitive, high resolution surveys of external galaxies with ALMA and the SKA.". We propose reducing StarFISH data to create Galactic Plane maps as ancillary data to CTA observations

Speaker: Aaron Bradley (Western Sydney University)

18 Analysis of J0450-7050, one of the largest LMC SNRs

I will present the results of a new multi-frequency analysis of one of the largest supernova remnants in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud. I will present the new high-resolution radio data available from the MeerKAT telescope to analyse the radio properties. The results show new filamentary structure which extend the size of J0450-7050 and a flat spectral index of -0.26.

Speaker: Zachary Smeaton (Western Sydney University)

12:30 Lunch

19 CTAO Pol updates and 2.3m tel. discussion

Quick updates on CTA-Pol progress

Speaker: Nick Tothill (Western Sydney University)

20 Update: Modelling Particle Transport

Speaker: Edmund McKennall (The University of Adelaide)

21 Update: Escaping Cosmic Rays from RX J1713

Speaker: Robert Koenig (The University of Adelaide)

22 Update: SNR-MCs

Speaker: Ryan Burley (The University of Adelaide)

15:00 Tea Break

23 Wrapup

Speaker: Dr Gavin Rowell (School of Physical Sciences, University of Adelaide)

16:30 Bus to QT Hotel