| Abstract: |
The past decade has seen a dramatic improvement in the quality of data available at high-energy gamma-ray bands. Fermi satellite has revealed about 2000 sources in the sky at the 100 MeV-100 GeV band, and more than 150 sources have been detected at above 100 GeV energies by ground-based Cherenkov Telescopes. CTA is a new ground-based observatory for very high-energy (VHE) gamma rays. CTA has ambitions science goals, for which it is necessary to achieve full-sky coverage, to improve the sensitivity by about an order of magnitude from a few tens of GeV to above 100 TeV with enhanced angular and energy resolutions over existing VHE gamma-ray observatories. An international collaboration has formed with more than 1000 members from 28 countries in Europe, Japan, Africa and North and South America. The design of CTA is based on currently available technology and the telescope construction phase will start in 2015/2016. In this talk, I will present the overall design and the planned schedule of the project. I will also discuss the current status of the high-energy gamma-ray astrophysics and the prospects for studies with CTA including the capability of the cold dark matter searches. |
