Survey of the Galactic Plane with the CherenkovTelescope Array

TL;DR

This paper reviews the scientific goals, recent progress, and expected outcomes of the upcoming CTA Galactic plane survey, which aims to map gamma-ray sources in the Milky Way with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution.

Contribution

It provides updated models, optimized survey strategies, and source catalog pipelines, offering new forecasts for CTA's detection capabilities and scientific impact.

Findings

Improved models for Galactic source populations and interstellar emission.

Enhanced survey strategy optimization for CTA.

Forecasts of source detections and scientific returns.

Abstract

Observations with the current generation of very-high-energy gamma-ray telescopes have revealed an astonishing variety of particle accelerators in the Milky Way, such as supernova remnants, pulsar wind nebulae, and binary systems. The upcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be the first instrument to enable a survey of the entire Galactic plane in the energy range from a few tens of GeV to 300 TeV with unprecedented sensitivity and improved angular resolution. In this contribution we will revisit the scientific motivations for the survey, proposed as a Key ScienceProject for CTA. We will highlight recent progress, including improved physically-motivated models for Galactic source populations and interstellar emission, advance on the optimization of the survey strategy, and the development of pipelines to derive source catalogues tested on simulated data. Based on this, we will provide a new forecast on the properties of the sources thatCTA will detect and discuss the expected scientific return from the study of gamma-ray source populations.