Massive Argon Space Telescope (MAST): a concept of heavy time projection chamber for gamma-ray astronomy in the 100 MeV --- 1 TeV energy range

Abstract

We explore the concept of liquid Argon time projection chamber (TPC) for gamma-ray astronomy in the 100 MeV --- 1 TeV energy range. We propose a basic layout for such a telescope called MAST. Using a last-generation rocket such as Falcon Heavy, it is possible to launch a detector with the effective area and the differential sensitivity about one order of magnitude better than the Fermi-LAT ones. At the same time, the MAST concept allows for an excellent angular resolution, 3-10 times better than the Fermi-LAT one depending on the energy, and good energy resolution ($\approx$ 20 % at 100 MeV and 6-10 % for the 10 GeV --- 1 TeV energy range). We show that such a telescope would be instrumental in a broad range of long-standing astrophysical problems.

To appear in Astroparticle Physics; 7 pages, 2 figures. This is the author's version of the paper and not the final typeset. Comments are very welcome!

References in corpus (15)

• Gravitational Waves and Gamma-rays from a Binary Neutron Star Merger: GW170817 and GRB 170817A
• The spectrum of isotropic diffuse gamma-ray emission between 100 MeV and 820 GeV
• Illuminating Gravitational Waves: A Concordant Picture of Photons from a Neutron Star Merger
• The major upgrade of the MAGIC telescopes, Part II: A performance study using observations of the Crab Nebula
• The Spectrum of the Isotropic Diffuse Gamma-Ray Emission Derived From First-Year Fermi Large Area Telescope Data
• The Imprint of The Extragalactic Background Light in the Gamma-Ray Spectra of Blazars
• The major upgrade of the MAGIC telescopes, Part I: The hardware improvements and the commissioning of the system
• GZK Neutrinos after the Fermi-LAT Diffuse Photon Flux Measurement
• The Anti-Coincidence Detector for the GLAST Large Area Telescope
• Compton Imaging of MeV Gamma-Rays with the Liquid Xenon Gamma-Ray Imaging Telescope (LXeGRIT)
• Extragalactic photon-ALP conversion at CTA energies
• Performance measurement of HARPO: a Time Projection Chamber as a gamma-ray telescope and polarimeter
• Physics of cosmological cascades and observable properties
• gamma-ray telescopes using conversions to electron-positron pairs: event generators, angular resolution and polarimetry
• The intergalactic electromagnetic cascade solution for the anomalies from $\gamma$-ray blazar observations