Scientific Seminars

On the Perspectives of High Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy

Felix Aharonian
Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, School of Cosmic Physics, Dublin, Ireland Max-Planck-Institut fur Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany

2023-03-10    14:30    - AULA CONSIGLIO + online: https://fisica-unimi.zoom.us/my/aula.consiglio?pwd=cjI0cUlxQk1jR09YQWw2NC9lMVJqQT09

Over the last two decades, the impressive achievements of gamma-ray astronomy have raised the field to the level of a nominal observational discipline. The discovery of thousands of GeV and TeV gamma-ray emitters, representing over a dozen galactic and extragalactic source populations, revealed that cosmic-ray factories are distributed throughout the Universe in a wide diversity of forms and scales — from compact relativistic objects like neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes to large-scale cosmological structures like galaxy clusters. These days, we are witnessing a new revolution in gamma-ray astronomy, this time in the PeV band. With the arrival of the North and South Cherenkov Telescope Arrays (CTA), the Southern Wide-field Gamma-ray Observatory (SWGO), and the recently completed Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO), one can anticipate groundbreaking discoveries in several research areas that would dramatically change the current concepts and paradigms of the most energetic and extreme phenomena in the non- thermal Universe. In this seminar, the major objectives and motivations of ground-based gamma-ray observations for the coming years are discussed in the context of the origin of galactic and extragalactic cosmic rays. Students are cordially invited – Contact silvia.leoni@mi.infn.it