Speaker
Description
The most energetic gamma-ray sky, spanning the TeV to PeV domain, has recently revealed a complex landscape of galactic sources, including Pevatrons, microquasars, dark accelerators, and extragalactic transients, offering new insights while posing significant challenges for understanding the non-thermal Universe. These challenges require new instruments capable of resolving complex morphologies, rapid variability and providing precise spectroscopy.
The ASTRI Mini-Array, an international project led by INAF and in partnership with the University of São Paulo (IAG-USP), IAC, and North West University, is designed to meet these goals through an array of nine dual-mirror Schwarzschild-Couder Cherenkov telescopes, currently being deployed at the Observatorio del Teide. With an angular resolution of approximately 3 arcminutes and an energy resolution down to 10% across a 1–200 TeV range, the array enables precise morphological and spectral characterization of complex sources. Furthermore, its exceptionally wide field of view (~10°) facilitates deep surveys of crowded Galactic regions and selected extragalactic fields, the study of large extended sources, and tiling of large uncertainty regions (e.g. from gravitational-wave events). Currently in its commissioning phase, the first telescopes are providing an initial glimpse on the array's capabilities, while fostering collaborations with multifrequency facilities and complementary instruments such as LHAASO, MAGIC and CTAO.