Ing. Mgr. Jakub Juryšek, Ph.D.
Ing. Jakub Vícha, Ph.D.
Established in 2024, this group is concerned with the study of cosmic gamma-ray sources, methods for the analysis of data from world's gamma-ray observatories and with the future development of those observatories. The main focus of our research is contribution to the preparation of the future large Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO), to the preparation of the Southern Wide-field Gamma-ray Observatory (SWGO), and to the operation of a pair of small Cherenkov telescopes SST-1M located at the Astronomical Institute of the CAS in Ondrejov.
Within our activities for CTAO, we are mainly involved in the operation of the existing Large-Size Telescope (LST, www.lst1.iac.es), which has been in commissioning on the Canary Island of La Palma since 2018. Our focus is on improvement of reconstruction methods that can be used to determine the direction of arrival and energy of the primary gamma-ray photon from images of atmospheric showers of secondary particles (produced after the interaction of the primary gamma-ray photon with atomic nuclei in the Earth's upper atmosphere), and thus to reconstruct an image of the cosmic gamma-ray source. Our team is also taking a leading role in planning the observations and tests of the telescope. We are also directly involved in data taking, analysis and physical interpretation, focusing on galactic sources such as pulsar wind nebulae or the vicinity of young stellar clusters.
SST-1M (sst-1m.space) is a pair of small Cherenkov telescopes, which are currently located and operated at the Astronomical Institute of the CAS in Ondřejov. The telescopes operate in the so-called stereoscopic mode, which allows to observe atmospheric showers from two different directions, leading to a significant refinement of the reconstructed properties of the primary gamma-ray photons. Our group has a leading role in the development of the reconstruction and calibration software, where our main task is to improve the overall sensitivity of the observatory and the accuracy of the measured results. We are also involved in the data analysis, observation planning, and studying the physical mechanisms leading to the gamma-ray emission of astrophysical sources. The SST-1M telescopes are sensitive to gamma-ray photons with energies above 1 TeV and have a very large field of view and good angular resolution by the standards of Cherenkov telescopes. This makes them well suited for observations of promising candidates for galactic accelerators of high-energy cosmic ray particles, which are the main focus of our studies.
SWGO (www.swgo.org) is a future ground-based water Cherenkov observatory based on the principle of detecting secondary particles of cosmic gamma-ray showers in water tanks equipped with sensitive photomultipliers. Once completed, the SWGO observatory will serve as a complement to CTAO, as it will be sensitive to gamma-ray photons of even higher energies, and will thus make an important contribution to uncovering the mechanisms leading to the cosmic-ray acceleration in our Galaxy. Our group is looking into the possibility of extending the observatory with Cherenkov telescopes (like SST-1M) to improve the energy calibration and the angular resolution of the observatory. We are also studying the sensitivity of the observatory to gamma-ray photons with energies on the order of petaelectronvolts.
