Baksan Air Shower Array: new prospects for old facility

Abstract

The Carpet air shower array of the Baksan Neutrino Observatory is in operation for a long time, and it was modernized more than once. A short review of important results obtained with this array is given, as well as future prospects, since at the moment the new project called Carpet-3 is in progress, using the old array as its basis. The purpose of the new project is to substantially increase the muon detector area (quite soon up to 400 m2 and later up to 600 m2). This improvement will allow one to reach a very good sensitivity to diffuse cosmic photons by selecting muon-poor showers. The energy range where the new experiment will be competitive with other experiments of gamma-ray astronomy is near and below 100 TeV.