Gamma-Ray Astronomy from the Ground

Abstract

The observation of cosmic gamma-rays from the ground is based upon the detection of gamma-ray initiated air showers. At energies between approximately $10^{11}$ eV and $10^{13}$ eV, the imaging air Cherenkov technique is a particularly successful approach to observe gamma-ray sources with energy fluxes as low as $\approx 10^{-13}$ erg\,cm${}^{-2}$s${}^{-1}$. The observations of gamma-rays in this energy band probe particle acceleration in astrophysical plasma conditions and are sensitive to high energy phenomena beyond the standard model of particle physics (e.g., self-annihilating or decaying dark matter, violation of Lorentz invariance, mixing of photons with light pseudo-scalars). The current standing of the field and its major instruments are summarised briefly by presenting selected highlights. A new generation of ground based gamma-ray instruments is currently under development. The perspectives and opportunities of these future facilities will be discussed.

8 pages, 7 figures, to appear in Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics: TAUP2015, Torino, Italy, edited by N. Fornengo, M. Regis, and H. Zechlin. To be published in Journal of Physics, Conference Series

References in corpus (6)

• The major upgrade of the MAGIC telescopes, Part II: A performance study using observations of the Crab Nebula
• Evidence for a new light spin-zero boson from cosmological gamma-ray propagation?
• The major upgrade of the MAGIC telescopes, Part I: The hardware improvements and the commissioning of the system
• Gamma rays from the quasar PKS 1441+25: story of an escape
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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Russian-German Astroparticle Data Life Cycle Initiative