Feasibility of Utilizing the CTA Gamma-Ray Telescopes as Free-Space Optical Communication Ground Stations

The signals that will be received on Earth from deep-space probes in future implementations of free-space optical communication will be extremely weak and new ground stations will have to be developed in order to support these links. This paper addresses the feasibility of using the technology developed in the gamma-ray telescopes that will make up the CTA (Cherenkov Telescope Array) observatory in the implementation of a new kind of ground station. Within the main advantages that these telescopes provide are the much larger apertures needed to overcome the power limitation that ground-based gamma-ray astronomy and optical communication both have. Also, the large number of big telescopes that will be built for CTA will make it possible to reduce costs by scale-economy production, enabling optical communications in the big telescopes that will be needed for future deep-space links. OCIS codes: 060.2605 (Free-space optical communication), 110.6770 (Telescopes).