Titile: From CYGNUS to LHAASO: Ground-based Gamma-Ray Astronomy

Speaker: 周浩

Institute: 上海交通大学李政道研究所

Host：冯思轶

Time：2026年9月24日周四 14:30

Location：物理楼552

Abstract：

Ground-based gamma-ray astronomy has advanced rapidly over the past two decades. Often considered as the “last window” in astronomy, it probes the highest-energy end of the electromagnetic spectrum. The origin of cosmic rays has remained a mystery since their discovery more than a century ago, and gamma-ray observations can pinpoint their sources. The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO), located in China at an altitude of 4,410 m above sea level, is a hybrid extensive air-shower detector array. Utilizing multiple detection techniques, LHAASO monitors the northern gamma-ray sky from a few hundred GeV to energies beyond 1 PeV. LHAASO has been fully operational since July 2021. Recently, LHAASO reported ultra-high-energy gamma-ray emission associated with several black-hole jet systems, including variable gamma-ray emission up to PeV energies from Cygnus X-3. These findings have confirmed the existence of PeV cosmic-ray accelerators in our Galaxy and opened a new era of ultra-high-energy gamma-ray astronomy. On October 9th, 2022, the brightest gamma-ray burst ever observed occurred within LHAASO’s field of view, and tens of thousands of very-high-energy gamma-ray photons were recorded. In this talk, I will summarize the development of ground-based gamma-ray instruments, with a focus on recent results from the LHAASO observatory.

Bio：

Dr. Hao Zhou joined the Tsung-Dao Lee Institute (TDLI) as a Tsung-Dao Lee Fellow/Associate Professor in 2019. He received his Ph.D. in 2015 from Michigan Technological University and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is an experimental particle astrophysicist and a member of several gamma-ray and cosmic-ray observatories such as HAWC, LHAASO, and SWGO. He has served as the coordinator of calibration working group, Galactic science working group, and the data and algorithm working group for the HAWC collaboration, and the data and algorithm coordinator of the water Cherenkov detector array in the LHAASO collaboration. Since 2021, he has been involved in the developments of the next generation gamma-ray telescope SWGO in the southern hemisphere and served as the national representative of China.

Related papers:

"Ultrahigh-energy gamma-ray emission associated with black hole–jet systems", DOI 10.1093/nsr/nwaf496

"A tera–electron volt afterglow from a narrow jet in an extremely bright gamma-ray burst", DOI 10.1126/science.adg9328