The AdvCam project: Designing the future cameras for the Large-Sized Telescope of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory.

An international collaboration composed of Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Swiss institutes, is developing the advanced camera (AdvCam), the next-generation camera for Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes, designed specifically for the Large-Sized Telescopes (LST) of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory. AdvCam incorporates cutting-edge Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) and a fully digital readout system, setting new standards for performance and efficiency. The upgraded camera will feature four times more pixels for the same field of view as the existing PMT-based camera, enabling finer image resolution and significantly improving angular precision and background noise rejection. To cope with the increase in number of pixels, many technological challenges are being tackled, from low power and high speed integrated chip design to real-time data processing on hardware accelerators. This technological leap will lower the energy threshold by allowing operation at lower observation threshold and providing brighter images. The increase in effective area, angular and energy resolution will enhance the sensitivity, unlocking new potential for gamma-ray astronomy. In this work, we present the performance of the AdvCam’s core building blocks and its innovative architecture capable of enabling unprecedented triggering capabilities. We also showcase the latest performance results based on Monte-Carlo data that has been tuned to reflect the latest stages of the on-going technological developments, highlighting the transformative capabilities of this next-generation instrument.