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Abstract

While current atmospheric Cherenkov installations consist of only a few telescopes each, future installations will be far more complex. Monte Carlo simulations have become an essential tool for the design and optimisation of such installations. The CORSIKA air-shower simulation code and the sim[underaccent underbar [below] telarray code for simulation of arrays of Cherenkov telescopes have been used to simulate several candidate configurations of the future Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) in detail. Together with other detailed and simplified simulations the resulting data provide the basis for the ongoing optimisation of CTA over a wide energy range. In this paper, the simulation methods are outlined and preliminary results on a number of configurations are presented. It is demonstrated that the initial goals of the CTA project can be achieved with available technology, at least in the medium and high energy range (about 100 GeV to 100 TeV).