Cosmic Explosions at the Highest Energies

New technology and upcoming facilities, such as the Čherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), have opened up a window into the high energy universe.

With the development of facilities such as CTA, the need for a program which can simulate extended air showers and Imaging Atmospheric Čherenkov Telescopes (IACTs), and the instrument response functions associated with them, has become very apparent. In the ?first part of this work, a novel Python package is presented, which can simulate air showers and IACT responses up to 10 TeV energies in minutes.

With new eyes on the universe in the high energy regime, questions arise on how this can be exploited to answer questions about Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs), the most energetic phenomena known. In the second part of this work, a bespoke simulation code for modelling the prompt emission produced by a magnetar powered GRB and a Poynting flux dominated outflow. This simulation code was then used in conjunction with the CTOOLS CTA science tool to simulate a CTA observation of the GRB emission. It was discovered that CTA should be able to detect such an event to a signi?cance of at least 10 Gaussian sigma.