https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201920901021
The Large Magellanic Cloud with the Cherenkov Telescope Array
1 Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas
2 ICTP-South American Institute for Fundamental Research. Instituto de Física Teórica - UNESP.
3 University of Nova Gorica
4 National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kiev, Ukraine
a e-mail: mariaisabel.bernardos@ciemat.es
Published online: 13 May 2019
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a spiral galaxy, satellite of the Milky way with a high star formation activity. It represents a unique laboratory for studying an extended and spatially resolved star-forming galaxy through gamma-ray observatories. Therefore, the LMC survey is one of the key science projects for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), the next-generation ground-based gamma-ray observatory. In this document we present the work performed over the last year by the CTA working group dedicated to the LMC, in order to offer a first characterization of the LMC at TeV energies. We have performed detectability forecasts based on the expected CTA performance for all sources in the region of interest of the LMC with known emission at GeV energies and above. Based on previous observations made by Fermi-LAT and H.E.S.S. we have characterized all point sources, extended sources and diffuse emission produced by cosmic-ray propagation, extrapolating their spectra to CTA energies. Finally, we have characterized the signal expected by different annihilation mechanisms of dark matter (DM) particles within the LMC, computing the detection sensitivity curve for this target in the cross-section-to-mass plane.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2019
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.