Speakers
Description
High-elevation particle detectors have opened a new observational window in Astronomy, significantly increasing the number of detected gamma-ray sources in the very- to ultra-high energy range. In particular, these instruments were able to achieve unprecedented sensitivity above 100 TeV and detected gamma-ray emission from sources up to PeV. The recent successes have all been obtained from the Northern sky, motivating the development of a new instrument in the South, from where many prominent targets such as the Galactic Center can be accessed. The Southern Wide-field Gamma-ray Observatory (SWGO) will be a new extensive air shower array in South America for the observation of VHE to UHE gamma rays, and the SWGO Collaboration is engaged in the design and prototyping work towards the realisation of this future facility. SWGO will use an array of water Cherenkov-based particle detectors to provide a wide-field and high-duty cycle view of the southern sky, complementing CTA and the existing arrays of the Northern Hemisphere, such as HAWC and LHAASO. Towards the lower energies, SWGO aims to push the observational range of wide-field ground-based gamma-ray facilities down to 100 GeV, bridging the gap with space-based instruments in monitoring the VHE sky. In this contribution, we will provide an overview of the status of the project, which has a strong contingent of Latin American participation, with candidate host sites present in Argentina, Chile, Peru and Bolivia. We will also present performance expectations and science goals, as well as technological developments and future plans for observatory construction.
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