Mirror Development for the Cherenkov Telescope Array
Abstract
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a planned observatory for very-high energy gamma-ray astronomy. It will consist of several tens of telescopes of different sizes, with a total mirror area of up to 10,000 square meters. Most mirrors of current installations are either polished glass mirrors or diamond-turned aluminium mirrors, both labour intensive technologies. For CTA, several new technologies for a fast and cost-efficient production of light-weight and reliable mirror substrates have been developed and industrial pre-production has started for most of them. In addition, new or improved aluminium-based and dielectric surface coatings have been developed to increase the reflectance over the lifetime of the mirrors compared to those of current Cherenkov telescope instruments.
- Publication:
-
International Cosmic Ray Conference
- Pub Date:
- 2013
- DOI:
- 10.48550/arXiv.1307.4563
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1307.4563
- Bibcode:
- 2013ICRC...33.1147F
- Keywords:
-
- CTA;
- imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope;
- gamma rays;
- optics;
- mirrors;
- Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- In Proceedings of the 33rd International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2013), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). All CTA contributions at arXiv:1307.2232