Status of the ground-based wide-angle gamma-ray and cosmic-ray experiment SCORE

We propose to explore the so-far poorly measured cosmic ray and gamma-ray sky (accelerator sky) in the energy range from 10 TeV to 1 EeV. The main motivation for observations in this energy regime is to solve the origin of Galactic cosmic rays. However, also fundamental questions of astroparticle physics and particle physics can be addressed and new physics questions might arise in the last remaining observation window of gamma-ray astronomy. The new large-area (10 square-km) wide-angle (1 sr) air Cherenkov detector SCORE (Study for a Cosmic Origin Explorer) is based on non-imaging Cherenkov light-front sampling with sensitive large-area detector modules of the order of 1 square-m. The lateral photon density and arrival-time distribution will be sampled up to large distances from the shower core. The physics motivations, the detector concept, the expected performance and the current status of the experiment are presented.