LATTES A new detector concept for
gamma-ray astrophysics
Overview
Present and planned large field-of-view (FoV) gamma-ray observatories are installed in the Northern Hemisphere, missing in particular the galactic center and have energy thresholds above 0.5 TeV.
The goal of LATTES is to design, prototype and construct a ground array able to monitor the Southern gamma-ray sky above 50 GeV, bringing to ground the wide field-of-view and large duty cycle observations characteristic of satellites, with comparable sensitivity and a cost one order of magnitude lower. Such an instrument will be a powerful time-variance explorer covering a missing space in the global multi-messenger network of gravitational, electromagnetic and neutrino observatories. It will be able to issue pointing alerts to IACTs (Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes) and thus fully complementary to CTA. It will collect abundant and highly relevant data and play a fundamental role in the search for emissions from extended regions, as the Fermi bubbles or dark matter annihilation regions.
LATTES proposes an innovative concept: a compact EAS array of hybrid detector units, covering an area of at least 20,000 m2, to be placed at high altitude (about 5,000 m above sea level, a.s.l.) in the Southern hemisphere.
Each detector unit combines two autonomous Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs), with good space and time resolution with a Water Cherenkov Detector (WCD), ensuring trigger efficiency and efficient background rejection. The combination of the information collected by the two detectors allows a good sensitivity all the way down to 50 GeV.
The proposed solution relies on well-grounded R&D in which LIP has had a leading role. The LATTES concept has been proposed by scientists from Portugal (LIP), Brazil (CBPF) and Italy (INFN-Padova and Roma). To pursue such an ambitious goal, a sound international collaboration has to be formed.
The LATTES project was chosen as an homage to the Italian-Brazilian physicist Cesare Lattes, who participated in the discovery of the pion meson.
The LATTES Detector
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LATTES:
Multivariate Analyses Worskhop, 14 September 2018
Granada University, Granada, Spain - Wide field-of-view
gamma-ray Southern observatory,
20-22 May 2019
LIP Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal - 7th LATTES
meeting,
28 September 2018
Coimbra University, Coimbra, Portugal
Next LATTES events
The goal of LATTES
is to design, prototype and construct a ground array able to monitor the
Southern gamma-ray sky above 50 GeV, bringing to ground the wide
field-of-view and large duty cycle observations characteristic of
satellites, with comparable sensitivity and a cost one order of magnitude
lower. Such an instrument will be a powerful time-variance explorer
covering a missing space in the global multi-messenger network of gravitational,
electromagnetic and neutrino observatories.
LHC experiments and phenomenology
Contacts:
