Wou-MMA: Understanding Cosmic Particle Accelerators with the VERITAS and CTA Gamma-Ray Observatories

Very-high-energy gamma-ray observations at energies above a hundred billion electron-Volts offer indirect methods for studying the highest-energy cosmic rays in our Universe. They help address some of the outstanding and important questions in particle astrophysics, such as the efficiency of cosmic ray acceleration, and provide evidence on sites of cosmic ray accelerators.

A large number of astrophysical sources, both within the Milky Way Galaxy, and in the distant universe, are known to emit high-energy radiation in the form of gamma rays, which are the highest energy form of the electromagnetic spectrum. The astrophysical environments that accelerate particles to such tremendous gamma-ray energies must have extreme conditions of electromagnetic or gravitational potential energy.

This award supports the group of Barnard Collage researchers to conduct operations and observing campaigns at the VERITAS Observatory to explore the physics of cosmic accelerators and multimessenger sources. The program sustains high undergraduate research impact, and aids in preparing students for a future in the fields of science and technology, or even a career in the next generation of astrophysics.

Graduate students and postdocs in the group are actively engaged in mentoring activities and the group is deeply committed to involving undergraduate students in high energy astrophysics research in an equitable manner, including students from the Science Pathways Scholars Program serving underrepresented students.

The nature of intense astrophysical sources is an outstanding open question in astroparticle physics, and studies in this field will impact our understanding of fundamental physics and the origin of our universe. Observing campaigns at the VERITAS Observatory facilitate data analyses with a focus on the physics of extragalactic objects such as blazar jets powered by supermassive black holes, and to search for gamma-ray counterparts of transient sources such as neutrino events and gravitational waves.

Within our own galaxy, the VERITAS observations search for accelerators at the peta-electron-Volt range, for gamma rays outside the shells of supernova remnants, and to study sources in the Milky Way Galaxy detected by ground-based water-Cherenkov observatories. In addition, the research program includes scientific studies with a prototype novel dual-mirror telescope, with a focus on morphological studies of sources in the Galaxy.

This new telescope allows the construction of a high-resolution camera, with a factor of ten more imaging pixels than in current telescopes, while keeping the camera diameter about a factor of three smaller. These improvements are fundamentally important to key science topics that include sky surveys. This project advances the goals of the NSF Windows on the Universe Big Idea.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.