Fermi-LAT, HESS and Beyond, Status and Future of Gamma-ray Astronomy

by Stefan Funk (Stanford University)

Monday 6 Jul 2009, 16:30 → 17:30 Europe/Zurich

Council Chamber** (CERN)

The field of gamma-ray astronomy has received considerable attention beyond the high-energy astrophysics community in the recent years. This is in part due to the success of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) such as HESS, MAGIC and VERITAS, measuring gamma-rays in the energy regime above 100 GeV. All these new facilities have lifted gamma-ray astronomy in the last few years from an exotic discipline with a handful of detected sources to a solid astronomical discipline. In addition, the recent launch of the Fermi Space Telescope (FST) and its main instrument, the Large Area Telescope (LAT) measuring gamma-rays outside Earth's atmosphere in the energy range beyond 100~MeV adds to the attention and excitement. The Fermi-LAT instrument will solidify this discipline by detecting several thousands of new sources and by bridging the energy spectra of ground-based detected VHE gamma-ray sources to well-studies objects at X-ray energies. In this seminar I will discuss the current status of the field, as well as the potential for future observatories.

Joint EP/PP seminar - 2009 http://smaria.home.cern.ch/smaria/ppep/ppep.htm

Poster EPPPSeminar06072009.pdf

Slides Funk_2009_CERN.pdf