The prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope: performance and planned upgrade of the world’s largest dual-mirror Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope

The Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (SCT) is a dual-mirror telescope proposed for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), the next-generation ground-based observatory for very-high-energy gamma rays. Its dual mirror technology allows to focus the light emitted in air showers on a reduced plate scale with respect to conventional single-mirror designs, enabling the use of a silicon photomultiplier-based camera with 11328 pixels, for unprecedented image resolution over a wide 8° field-of-view (FOV). The U.S.-led SCT project has built and currently operates a prototype SCT (pSCT) at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Amado, Arizona. The pSCT features a partially-equipped camera with 1600 pixels and a FOV of about 2.7°, and has recently detected the Crab Nebula. An upgrade of the pSCT camera sensors and electronics, funded by a Major Research Instrumentation grant from the National Science Foundation, is ongoing, with the aim of fully populating the focal plane and improving the noise performance of the current prototype. In this contribution, we will introduce the CTA observatory and the proposed U.S. participation with the SCT, which has recently been endorsed in the Astro 2020 decadal survey. We will present the current status and planned upgrade of the pSCT.