The Transients Handler System for the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory

TL;DR

The paper presents the design and integration of the Transients Handler system within the CTAO's ACADA, enabling efficient management of science alerts for rapid target-of-opportunity observations in gamma-ray astronomy.

Contribution

It introduces the Transients Handler system, a novel component for managing alerts and triggering observations in the CTAO infrastructure.

Findings

Effective validation and processing of science alerts.

Improved responsiveness for target-of-opportunity observations.

Integration with existing control systems demonstrated.

Abstract

The Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) will be the largest and most advanced ground-based facility for gamma-ray astronomy. Several dozens of telescopes will be operated at both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere. With the advent of multi-messenger astronomy, many new large science infrastructures will start science operations and target-of-opportunity observations will play an important role in the operation of the CTAO. The Array Control and Data Acquisition (ACADA) system deployed on each CTAO site will feature a dedicated sub-system to manage external and internal scientific alerts: the Transients Handler. It will receive, validate, and process science alerts in order to determine if target-of-opportunity observations can be triggered or need to be updated. Various tasks defined by proposal-based configurations are processed by the Transients Handler. These tasks include, among others, the evaluation of observability of targets and their correlation with known sources or objects. This contribution will discuss the concepts and design of the Transients Handler and its integration in the ACADA system.