Exploring the Nature's extreme accelerators with HESS -- Francesca Volpe (MPI Heidelberg, Candidature CR1)

mardi 1 mars 2011, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Paris

1222-RC-08 (Universe)

The H.E.S.S. experiment has been operating since December 2003 and detects very-high-energy (VHE) gamma-rays with energies ranging from 100 GeV to ~50 TeV. The regular observation of the Galactic Plane and a dedicated observing program for the extragalactic sky, have yielded to the discovery of more than 80 sources, belonging to different classes. The HESS observations have revealed our Galaxy dominated by pulsar wind nebulae, supernova remnants and unidentified sources, while a large majority of extragalactic very high energy sources belongs to the class of active galactic nuclei, in particular the BL Lac sub-class. Although different physics mechanisms are responsible of their gamma-ray emission, all these astronomical objects are sites in the Universe where very violent phenomena occur and particles are accelerated at very high energies. This talk will illustrate some of the key results from H.E.S.S. including the most recent discoveries, mention some of their implications on the physics in play in different type of sources, and give an overview of the scientific perspectives of the next-generation Cherenkov Telescope Array.