Last Wednesday, November 15, the Nobel Prize laureate and director of the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research at the University of Tokyo (ICRR), Professor Takaaki Kajita, visited CIEMAT invited by the Particle Physics Unit, CIEMAT-FP, Unit of Excellence María de Maeztu. Within the framework of the seminar program organized by this Unit, Professor Kajita gave a talk on the present, past and future of experimental neutrino physics in the CIEMAT Auditorium.

One of the research activity lines of the CIEMAT-FP Unit is gamma-ray astronomy, and currently involved in the construction of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), a project in which the ICRR and CIEMAT are collaborating. Taking advantage of this visit, several members of the CIEMAT group had the opportunity to meet with the Nobel Prize and with Professor Masahiro Teshima, director of the Max Planck Institute of Physics and the gamma department of the ICRR, to review the progress of the project, and show them the status of the construction in the CIEMAT of the camera that will be installed in the first prototype of Large Size Telescope (LST).

The ICRR is the institution that leads the construction of the CTA LST telescopes, a project in which the CIEMAT is responsible for the design and construction of the camera's mechanics and an important part of the firing electronics.

It is planned that the first LST telescope for CTA, which is under construction at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma, will be inaugurated in summer of 2018

Picture taken during the presentation of Prof. Kajita

Visit to the hall where the first LST for CTA is being asssembled.  

Artist's view of the CTA telescopes at the Roque de Los Muchachos in La Palma.

Picture of the construction structure of the first LST in La Palma.