The Fermi Gamma Ray Telescope (Design, Construction, launch and early Science Results)

by Luca Baldini (INFN-Pisa)

Friday 20 Mar 2009, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Zurich

40-S2-D01 (CERN)

Abstract: Fermi (formerly known as GLAST) is the next generation high-energy gamma-ray observatory designed to explore the sky with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution, filling the gap between the previous generation of gamma-ray space missions and the ground based Cerenkov detectors. The Large Area Telescope (LAT), the main instrument on-board Fermi, is a pair-conversion telescope designed and built exploiting the state of the art in high-energy physics detector technology. It consists of: • a silicon strip tracker made of 4×4 tower modules • a CsI imaging calorimeter, and • a segmented anti-coincident shield for rejection of charged particles Successfully launched on June 11, 2008, Fermi started nominal operation after 60 days of spacecraft and instrument check-out and calibration. With more than 6 months of science data and several important results the LAT is now fulfilling its pre-launch promise to become the space-based high-energy gamma-ray observatory of reference for this decade. In this talk I will give a brief overview of the mission, describe the LAT performance, and discuss the operation experiences, the highlights from the initial on-orbit verification phase, as well as the most exciting scientific results obtained so far. Detector Seminar webpage Organizer: Ariella CATTAI / PH-ADO

Slides lbaldini_cern09.pdf