Status of the Davies-Cotton and Schwarzschild-Couder Medium-Sized Telescopes for the Cherenkov Telescope Array

TL;DR

This paper reviews the development and testing status of medium-sized telescopes for the Cherenkov Telescope Array, comparing traditional Davies-Cotton and innovative Schwarzschild-Couder designs for high-energy gamma-ray observation.

Contribution

It provides an update on the prototypes and testing progress of two different telescope designs for the CTA's intermediate energy range.

Findings

Both telescope designs are under testing and development.

The Schwarzschild-Couder design offers a novel dual-mirror approach.

Prototype testing is ongoing at different sites.

Abstract

The Cherenkov Telescope Array is an observatory dedicated to very high energy gamma rays with unprecedented sensitivity between 20 GeV and 300 TeV to be installed on two sites: Canary Island La Palma and Paranal Chile. Three telescope sizes will be used to cover the entire energy range. Two different telescope designs have been proposed to cover the intermediate energy range from 150 GeV to 5 TeV. One of the proposals is based on the traditional single mirror Davies-Cotton design, with two different camera concepts with different detection and processing schemes are under test. Another innovative design based on a dual-mirror Schwarzschild-Couder optics has also been developed and is under test in Arizona, USA. In this talk, the different concepts and the status of the prototypes will be presented.