The Single Mirror Small Sized Telescope For The Cherenkov Telescope Array

TL;DR

The SST-1M is a compact, lightweight gamma-ray telescope with a single mirror design, optimized for high-energy gamma-ray detection in the CTA, featuring innovative SiPM-based digital readout and a successful prototype.

Contribution

This paper introduces the design, construction, and performance evaluation of the first SST-1M prototype, a novel single mirror small-sized telescope for CTA.

Findings

Successful prototype construction and testing

High-performance SiPM-based digital readout system

Optimized for 5-300 TeV gamma-ray detection

Abstract

The Small Size Telescope with Single Mirror (SST-1M) is one of the proposed types of Small Size Telescopes (SST) for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). About 70 SST telescopes will be part the CTA southern array which will also include Medium Sized Telescopes (MST) in its threshold configuration. Optimized for the detection of gamma rays in the energy range from 5 TeV to 300 TeV, the SST-1M uses a Davies-Cotton optics with a 4 m dish diameter with a field of view of 9 degrees. The Cherenkov light resulting from the interaction of the gamma-rays in the atmosphere is focused onto a 88 cm side-to-side hexagonal photo-detection plane. The latter is composed of 1296 hollow light guides coupled to large area hexagonal silicon photomultipliers (SiPM). The SiPM readout is fully digital readout as for the trigger system. The compact and lightweight design of the SST-1M camera offers very high performance ideal for gamma-ray observation requirement. In this contribution, the concept, design, performance and status of the first telescope prototype are presented.