Prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope for the Cherenkov Telescope Array: Commissioning the Optical System
Abstract
A prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (pSCT) has been constructed at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory as a candidate for the medium-sized telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO). CTAO is currently entering early construction phase of the project and once completed it will vastly improve very high energy gamma-ray detection component in multi-wavelength and multi-messenger observations due to significantly improved sensitivity, angular resolution and field of view comparing to the current generation of the ground-based gamma-ray observatories H.E.S.S., MAGIC and VERITAS. The pSCT uses a dual aspheric mirror design with a m primary mirror and m secondary mirror, both of which are segmented. The Schwarzschild-Couder (SC) optical system (OS) selected for the prototype telescope achieves wide field of view of degrees and simultaneously reduces the focal plane plate scale allowing an unprecedented compact (m diameter) implementation of the high-resolution camera (mm/ deg per imaging pixel with pixels) based on the silicon photo-multipliers (SiPMs). The OS of the telescope is designed to eliminate spherical and comatic aberrations and minimize astigmatism to radically improve off-axis imaging and consequently angular resolution across all the field of view with respect to the conventional single-mirror telescopes. Fast and high imaging resolution OS of the pSCT comes with the challenging submillimeter-precision custom alignment system, which was successfully demonstrated with an on-axis point spread function (PSF) of arcmin prior to the first-light detection of the Crab Nebula in 2020. Ongoing and future commissioning activities are reported.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2110.07463,
title = {Prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope for the Cherenkov Telescope Array: Commissioning the Optical System},
author = {C. B. Adams and G. Ambrosi and M. Ambrosio and C. Aramo and P. I. Batista and W. Benbow and B. Bertucci and E. Bissaldi and M. Bitossi and A. Boiano and C. Bonavolontà and R. Bose and A. Brill and J. H. Buckley and R. A. Cameron and R. Canestrari and M. Capasso and M. Caprai and C. E. Covault and D. Depaoli and L. Di Venere and M. Errando and S. Fegan and Q. Feng and E. Fiandrini and A. Furniss and A. Gent and N. Giglietto and F. Giordano and E. Giro and R. Halliday and O. Hervet and T. B. Humensky and S. Incardona and M. Ionica and W. Jin and D. Kieda and F. Licciulli and S. Loporchio and G. Marsella and V. Masone and K. Meagher and T. Meures and B. A. W. Mode and S. A. I. Mognet and R. Mukherjee and D. Nieto and A. Okumura and N. Otte and F. R. Pantaleo and R. Paoletti and G. Pareschi and F. Di Pierro and E. Pueschel and D. Ribeiro and L. Riitano and E. Roache and J. Rousselle and A. Rugliancich and M. Santander and R. Shang and L. Stiaccini and L. P. Taylor and L. Tosti and G. Tovmassian and G. Tripodo and V. Vagelli and M. Valentino and J. Vandenbroucke and V. V. Vassiliev and D. A. Williams and P. Yu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.07463},
year = {2021}
}