Surveys with the Cherenkov Telescope Array
G. Dubus, J. L. Contreras, S. Funk, Y. Gallant, T. Hassan, J. Hinton,, Y. Inoue, J. Kn\"odlseder, P. Martin, N. Mirabal, M. de Naurois, M. Renaud, (for the CTA consortium)

TL;DR
This paper discusses the scientific rationale, feasibility, and expected outcomes of conducting large-scale sky surveys with the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), aiming to discover faint gamma-ray sources and complement existing surveys.
Contribution
It provides a detailed plan for CTA sky surveys, including sensitivity estimates, survey strategies, and potential scientific impacts, emphasizing their importance in gamma-ray astronomy.
Findings
Galactic Plane survey can detect hundreds of sources.
All-sky survey could identify about a dozen blazars or Fermi/LAT counterparts.
Divergent pointing mode may significantly reduce survey time without sensitivity loss.
Abstract
Surveys open up unbiased discovery space and generate legacy datasets of long-lasting value. One of the goals of imaging arrays of Cherenkov telescopes like CTA is to survey areas of the sky for faint very high energy gamma-ray (VHE) sources, especially sources that would not have drawn attention were it not for their VHE emission (e.g. the Galactic "dark accelerators"). More than half the currently known VHE sources are to be found in the Galactic plane. Using standard techniques, CTA can carry out a survey of the region |l|<60 degrees, |b|<2 degrees in 250 hr (1/4th the available time per year at one location) down to a uniform sensitivity of 3 mCrab (a "Galactic Plane survey"). CTA could also survey 1/4th of the sky down to a sensitivity of 20 mCrab in 370 hr of observing time (an "all-sky survey"), which complements well the surveys by the Fermi/LAT at lower energies and extended…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
