The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a new observatory for very high-energy (VHE) gamma rays. CTA has ambitions science goals, for which it is necessary to achieve full-sky coverage, to improve the sensitivity by about an order of magnitude, to span about four decades of energy, from a few tens of GeV to above 100 TeV with enhanced angular and energy resolutions over existing VHE gamma-ray observatories. An international collaboration has formed with more than 1000 members from 27 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and North and South America. In 2010 the CTA Consortium completed a Design Study and started a three-year Preparatory Phase which leads to production readiness of CTA in 2014. In this paper we introduce the science goals and the concept of CTA, and provide an overview of the project. ?? 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
The Telescope Array (TA) collaboration has measured the energy spectrum of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) with primary energies above 1.6 × 10 18 eV. This measurement is based upon four years of observation by the surface detector component of TA. The spectrum shows a dip at an energy of 4.6 × 10 18 eV and a steepening at 5.4 × 10 19 eV which is consistent with the expectation from the GZK cutoff. We present the results of a technique, new to the analysis of UHECR surface detector data, that involves generating a complete simulation of UHECRs striking the TA surface detector. The procedure starts with shower simulations using the CORSIKA Monte Carlo program where we have solved the problems caused by use of the "thinning" approximation. This simulation method allows us to make an accurate calculation of the acceptance of the detector for the energies concerned.
The Telescope Array (TA) experiment, located in the western desert of
Utah,USA, is designed for observation of extensive air showers from extremely
high energy cosmic rays. The experiment has a surface detector array surrounded
by three fluorescence detectors to enable simultaneous detection of shower
particles at ground level and fluorescence photons along the shower track. The
TA surface detectors and fluorescence detectors started full hybrid observation
in March, 2008. In this article we describe the design and technical features
of the TA surface detector.Comment: 32 pages, 17 figure
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