Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope

MACHETE: A Transit Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope to Survey Half of the Very High Energy Gamma-Ray Sky

J. Cortina
J. E. Ward, J. Cortina, R. Lopez-Coto, A. Moralejo

Abstract:

Contrary to the large FoV of Fermi-LAT, current Cherenkov telescopes for VHE gamma-ray astrophysics are pointing instruments with a field of view up to a few tens of sq.deg. We propose to build an array of two non-steerable telescopes with a FoV of 5 x 60 sq.deg oriented along the meridian. Roughly half of the sky drifts through this FoV in a year. We have performed a MC simulation to estimate the performance of this instrument, which we dub MACHETE. The sensitivity that MACHETE would achieve after 5 years of operation for every source in this half of the sky is comparable to the sensitivity that a current IACT achieves for a specific source after a dedicated 50h observation. The analysis energy threshold would be ~150 GeV and the angular resolution ~0.1 deg, being complementary to the survey performed by Fermi-LAT. For astronomical objects that transit over MACHETE for a specific night, it would achieve an integral sensitivity of 12% of Crab above 500 GeV in a night. This makes MACHETE a powerful tool to trigger observations of variable sources at VHE or any other wavelengths.