Collaborative Research: WoU-MMA: Optimizing the Design of the Next Generation Gamma-ray Observatory in Chile - SWGO

This project supports the development of the Southern Wide-Field Gamma-Ray Observatory (SWGO), a major international scientific facility designed to capture the highest-energy light in the universe. Located in the Atacama Desert in Chile, this observatory will act as a giant cosmic camera, monitoring the sky for extreme space events such as exploding stars and their remnants, black holes, and colliding galaxies. By tracking these phenomena, the project helps scientists understand how the universe works, how radiation travels through space, and where it is generated. Beyond its profound scientific value, this research promotes national competitiveness and technological progress. It maintains global leadership in astrophysics for the United States, trains next-generation scientists and engineers through hands-on research opportunities for students, and advances open-access software tools that can be adapted for modern artificial intelligence applications. To achieve these goals, key risk-reduction and engineering prototyping tasks are carried out for the observatory's core Water Cherenkov Detector (WCD) array. Extreme weather testing of an updated, corrugated steel-mounted WCD design is conducted at Michigan Technological University, complemented by mechanical prototype testing of a steel mounted tank at the high-altitude site in Chile. Ground-based detection of sub-TeV to PeV gamma rays is optimized to provide critical data on cosmic ray acceleration, search for dark matter annihilation signatures in dwarf spheroidal galaxies, and constrain beyond-standard-model physics. The activities are designed to deliver an observatory that is robust, quick, and nimble in its construction and operational overhead. This objective is tightly integrated into the broader multi-messenger astronomy network to enable high-cadence, low-latency transient alerts in partnership with gravitational wave and neutrino observatories in order to achieve world-leading scientific advancements. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.