Speaker
Description
Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) have recently shown great potential as optical intensity interferometers. However, due to their design there are some intrinsic limitations to improving their sensitivity, such as their low focal ratios. Implementing the 'I3T concept', in which sets of facets of the primary mirror (submirrors) are focused onto different pixels of the camera, on the MAGIC telescopes at La Palma together with an upgrade of the photodetection technology results in various optical configurations that can serve to overcome these design restrictions. We present three such configurations and evaluate their impact on photon arrival time distributions, filter performance, achievable angular resolution and sensitivity. Simulations show that these setups can improve sensitivity by a factor of 6, as well as significantly expanding the angular scales accessible to these telescopes. Such an upgrade enable new scientific capabilities such as milliarcsecond-scale imaging of fast-rotating stars, measuring their circumstellar disk and oblateness, and earliest stages of nova ejecta. These developments provide a practical upgrade path for existing IACT arrays, open the possibility of combining the Cherenkov telescopes with optical ones and offer a scalable framework for future facilities such as the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO).
