Newton STFC-NARIT: Capacity Building Towards TeV Energy Frontiers with the Cherenkov Telescope Array

Gamma rays are the most energetic kind of radiation used by astronomers - around a million times more energetic than X-rays. We are protected by the Earth's atmosphere from this energetic radiation, but we are still able to see its effects on the ground. Each gamma-ray creates a cascade of sub-atomic particles in the atmosphere, which produces the light-speed equivalent of a sonic boom - a flash of blue light called Cherenkov radiation. This light is faint (about 1/10000th of the total starlight) and each flash lasts only a few billionths of a second, but with enough large telescopes, we can detect it and work out where this extraordinary radiation comes from (generally black holes and the remains of dead stars!).

Astronomers and engineers from 31 countries are currently in the process of designing and building a new array of telescopes to detect gamma-rays; the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). Two of the countries involved in this project are the UK and Thailand. While the UK has been in the project since it started, Thailand joined in 2015, and the aim of this project is to work together to enable the astronomers and engineers in Thailand to strengthen their contribution to CTA. This, in turn, will help the project as a whole progress and enable further scientific co-operation between the UK and Thai researchers involved, to the benefit of all parties.

There are three strands to this project. The first is to combine the expertise in mirror technology at Durham University with the expertise at NARIT in Thailand, with the aim of NARIT's being able to provide a mirror facility for CTA that will oat, characterize, qualify and maintain CTA's mirrors - as there will be over 5000 of them, this is quite a challenge, which will be best met by combining our efforts. Secondly, while the Thai astronomers have a lot of experience in analyzing astronomical data, they do not have any experience in analyzing gamma-ray data. The team at Durham has the most experience of anyone in the UK in this aspect of the project, and they will help the Thai astronomers learn to analyze gamma-ray data so that they will be able to benefit scientifically from the data that CTA will bring us in a few years' time. Finally, we are planning to create material that will teach schoolchildren and the general public about CTA, particularly by translating current CTA outreach material into Thai.

The first element of this project is the establishment of a CTA Mirror Facility (CMF) to provide coating, characterization, qualification, and maintenance for the project. While clearly beneficial to CTA, the CMF will have significant impact to NARIT's thin-film capabilities with the long-term goal being the potential to develop market-mature products (e.g., coating chambers and services) to serve domestic industries. The proposed facility will cultivate the local industrial-scale thin-film capabilities that can serve, e.g., domestic low-emissivity glass and solar panel industries, promoting the use of domestic technologies to address environmental issues by creating a domestic critical-mass of industries in line with environmentally-friendly national policies. Beyond this immediate impact, the CMF will expose local staff and engineers to world-class innovation environments, cultures, and paradigms in the UK and the wider CTA Consortium.

The second element of this project is capacity-building in data analysis for CTA in Thailand. This knowledge transfer and engagement of the UK community will help to provide a vehicle to engage in frontier science questions, which in themselves lead to human capacity building in addition to the exposure to world-class research and innovation environments. Scientifically, we propose to collaborate on high-energy properties of active galactic nuclei (AGN), a research focus of Wiphu Rujopakarn at NARIT, simulating their properties in preparation for the commencement of CTA operation. We propose to further collaborate with the CTA machine-based data analysis group, including Prof Garret Cotter at Oxford, on the application of machine-learning analsysis methods to CTA data. This is an area with large potential for human capacity development that will have an immediate impact on the Thai domestic data science industry.

We will organize public talks and panel discussions on CTA science in Thailand by visitors from the UK, prioritizing women and minorities who can serve as role models for students. NARIT has a strong track-record of outreach activities from the >30 FTE-strong outreach department. However, their background is predominantly optical astronomy and little has been done in terms of outreach material development for multiwavelength astronomy (including radio astronomy, which is also a strategic focus of the institute). This is a prime opportunity to start, e.g., by translating existing outreach materials from Durham in high-energy astronomy into the Thai language. This will have an impact on young people, encouraging them to consider a career in science or engineering.