Baseline telescope layouts of the Cherenkov Telescope Array

TL;DR

This paper presents the baseline telescope layouts for the Cherenkov Telescope Array, a next-generation gamma-ray observatory designed to significantly enhance sensitivity and energy coverage through a large array of telescopes.

Contribution

It provides the proposed baseline layouts for CTA's telescopes at both Northern and Southern sites, based on extensive Monte Carlo simulations.

Findings

Baseline layouts for CTA sites are established.

The array design optimizes sensitivity and energy coverage.

Monte Carlo simulations support the proposed configurations.

Abstract

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be the next generation of ground-based instrument for Very High Energy gamma-ray astronomy. It will improve the sensitivity of current telescopes by up to an order of magnitude and provide energy coverage from 20 GeV up to 300 TeV. This improvement will be achieved using a total of 19 and 99 telescopes of three different sizes spread out over 0.4 and 4.5 km$^2$ at two sites, respectively, in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. After a concerted effort involving three different large-scale Monte Carlo productions performed during the last years, here, the baseline layouts for both CTA sites that should emerge after several years of construction are presented.