Preparing for CTA: Paving the way for a flagship observatory; Contributions of Humboldt University of Berlin to the commissioning of the CTA observatory

The CTA observatory will explore gamma-ray sources in the energy range from ~10 GeV to ~100 TeV. Its
10-fold greater flux sensitivity, wider energy range and better angular resolution compared to current experiments will broaden the observational horizon and enable important contributions to the physics of high-energy processes in the Universe.
The CTA observatory is at an important turning point in its development. A first LST has been commissioned at the northern site and plans exist to build an MST at the same site. For the southern site, advanced plans exist for the installation of MST and SST pathfinder telescopes during the next funding period.
The German university groups play a crucial role in many aspects of these developments. This includes, among other things, the testing of components, the development of software and the scientific commissioning of the first telescopes. Importantly, the work done in this collaborative effort, directly benefits CTA in kind and ensures a strong role for the German university groups as part of a leading German contribution to CTA.
To strengthen the role of the universities, they have formed an alliance and defined four sub-goals:
- Contributions to the CTA LSTs
- Contributions to the CTA MSTs
- Contributions to the CTA SSTs
- Software and science contributions to CTA
The Humboldt University is involved mostly in one of these sub-goals “Contributions to the CTA MSTs”. We will contribute two projects to this sub-goal “MST Pathfinder Mirror Alignment” and “MST Pathfinder Optics and Simulation Verification”.