Prototype 9.7 m Schwarzschild-Couder telescope for the Cherenkov Telescope Array: status of the optical system

TL;DR

This paper reports on the development and current status of a 9.7-meter Schwarzschild-Couder telescope prototype for the Cherenkov Telescope Array, highlighting its innovative optical design and technical challenges.

Contribution

It presents the implementation status of a novel 9.7m Schwarzschild-Couder optical system for gamma-ray astronomy, including mirror production and alignment techniques.

Findings

Successful implementation of the optical system prototype

Achievement of submillimeter-precision alignment

Enhanced off-axis performance and field of view

Abstract

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is an international project for a next-generation ground-based gamma ray observatory, aiming to improve on the sensitivity of current-generation experiments by an order of magnitude and provide energy coverage from 30 GeV to more than 300 TeV. The 9.7m Schwarzschild-Couder (SC) candidate medium-size telescope for CTA exploits a novel aplanatic two-mirror optical design that provides a large field of view of 8 degrees and substantially improves the off-axis performance giving better angular resolution across all of the field of view with respect to single-mirror telescopes. The realization of the SC optical design implies the challenging production of large aspherical mirrors accompanied by a submillimeter-precision custom alignment system. In this contribution we report on the status of the implementation of the optical system on a prototype 9.7 m SC telescope located at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in southern Arizona.