Survey of the Galactic Plane with the CherenkovTelescope Array

Abstract

Observations with the current generation of very-high-energy gamma-ray telescopes have revealed an astonishing variety of particle accelerators in the Milky Way, such as supernova remnants, pulsar wind nebulae, and binary systems. The upcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be the first instrument to enable a survey of the entire Galactic plane in the energy range from a few tens of GeV to 300 TeV with unprecedented sensitivity and improved angular resolution. In this contribution we will revisit the scientific motivations for the survey, proposed as a Key ScienceProject for CTA. We will highlight recent progress, including improved physically-motivated models for Galactic source populations and interstellar emission, advance on the optimization of the survey strategy, and the development of pipelines to derive source catalogues tested on simulated data. Based on this, we will provide a new forecast on the properties of the sources thatCTA will detect and discuss the expected scientific return from the study of gamma-ray source populations.

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Gammapy: A Python package for gamma-ray astronomy
• Population synthesis of pulsar wind nebulae and pulsar halos in the Milky Way -- Predicted contributions to the very-high-energy sky
• Dark Matter Line Searches with the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• Detailed Analysis of the TeV γ-Ray Sources 3HWC J1928+178, 3HWC J1930+188, and the New Source HAWC J1932+192
• Dark Matter and Galaxy Cross-Correlations with the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory