Key science projects

The number of scientists attracted to the still-young field of gamma-ray astronomy is growing at a steady rate, drawing from other fields such as nuclear and particle physics, in addition to the increased interest by other parts of the astrophysical community, such as radio and X-ray astronomers. About 1’400 scientists from about 30 research institutes formed the CTA Consortium (CTAC), which has promoted the Science of CTAO. This made CTAO the most prominent priority of international Roadmaps, e.g. the APPEC Roadmap 2017-2026 and the ESFRI Roadmap where it is a landscape project together with SKAO and E-ELT. The Key Science Projects (KSP) of CTAO were studied and are now collected in the Science Book (arXiv:1709.07997) and reserved observation time is planned to bring the foreseen results. The KSP are built around 3 major pillars of CTAO Science:

• 1) Cosmic rays (how and where they are accelerated? Their propagation and their impact on the environment)
• 2) Probing extreme environments and the processes close to neutron stars, black holes and relativistic jets, winds and explosions; exploring cosmic voids and magnetic fields;
• 3) Physics frontiers beyond the standard model of particle physics (the nature of the dark matter and how is it distributed, the existence of axion-like particles, violations of Lorentz invariance for high-energy photons