TeV Instrumentation: current and future

TL;DR

This paper reviews the development of TeV gamma-ray astronomy instrumentation over the past 20 years, highlighting current technologies, challenges, and future advancements to enhance observational capabilities.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of existing TeV instruments and discusses future instrument developments and their expected impact on the field.

Findings

Current instruments have significantly advanced TeV astronomy.

Next-generation instruments will offer improved performance and sensitivity.

Synergies with other observational bands are crucial for future discoveries.

Abstract

During the last 20 years, TeV astronomy turned from a fledgling field, with only a handful of sources into a fully-developed astronomy discipline, broadening our knowledge on a variety of types of TeV gamma-ray sources. This progress has been mainly achieved due to currently operating instruments: Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes, Surface Array and Water Cherenkov detectors. Moreover, we are at the brink of a next generation of instruments, with a considerable leap of performance parameters. This review summarises the current status of the TeV astronomy instrumentation, mainly focusing on the comparison of the different types of instruments and analysis challenges, as well as provides an outlook into the future installations. The capabilities and limitations of different techniques of observations of TeV gamma rays are discussed, as well as synergies to other bands and messengers.