Gamma Ray Science Interest Group
(GR SIG)

Workshops

1 October 2018

Workshop Summary

by John Tomsick, Sylvain Guiriec, and Henric Krawczynski

We had a productive workshop at Clemson University on October 1st, with about a dozen people attending in person and several more on the WebEx.

We made significant progress on the GammaSIG White Papers. We decided on the focus of each of the 5 WPs, discussed their content, assigned leaders to each one, and spent time writing.

You can see where we are on the 5 WPs by looking at the information below. Links are either to Overleaf or Google docs. If you have any problems accessing the Google docs, please click on the "Request access" button.

Our internal deadline for having readable drafts is November 9th, but input is welcome before then. In fact, WP#2 is already quite advanced. Input can be given by e-mailing one of the GammaSIG leaders (Sylvain/John/Henric) or the individual WP leaders (see below).

Finally, thanks very much to Dieter Hartmann for hosting the workshop.

1. Supermassive BHs at High Redshift
   Leaders: Vaidehi Paliya, Marco Ajello
   Thematic areas: #6 Galaxy Evolution (primary); #7 Cosmology and Fundamental Physics (secondary)


2. Catching Element Formation in the Act
   Leaders: Chris Fryer, Frank Timmes, Aimee Hungerford, Aaron Couture
   Thematic areas: #4 Formation and evolution of compact objects; #5 Resolved stellar populations and their environments (not sure about primary and secondary). The current version of the WP points to primary, secondary, and tertiary "Science Frontier Panels" from the 2010 Decadal.


3. Constraining Dark Matter with Gamma-ray Measurements
   Leaders: Tim Linden, Matt Buckley, Regina Caputo, John Tomsick
   Thematic areas: #7 Cosmology and Fundamental Physics


4. Jets and Particle Acceleration
   Leaders: Toni Venters, Kenji Hamaguchi, Terri Brandt, Sylvain Guiriec
   Thematic areas: #8 Multi-Messenger Astronomy and Astrophysics (primary or secondary); I think it should connect to another theme (leaders should discuss)


5. Gamma-ray Science in the 2020s
   Leaders: Sylvain Guiriec, John Tomsick, Dieter Hartmann, Terri Brandt, Eric Burns, Colleen Wilson-Hodge
   Thematic areas: #8 Multi-Messenger Astronomy and Astrophysics (different from the MMASAG WP, but it is good for the two to be coordinated) The workshop organized to continue our efforts in writing the GammaSIG white papers for the Decadal Survey