Title: Extragalactic source population studies at very high energies in the Cherenkov Telescope Array era,
Abstract: The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next generation ground-based
$\gamma$-ray observatory. It will provide an order of magnitude better
sensitivity and an extended energy coverage, 20 GeV - 300 TeV, relative to
current Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs). IACTs, despite
featuring an excellent sensitivity, are characterized by a limited field of
view that makes the blind search of new sources very time inefficient.
Fortunately, the $\textit{Fermi}$-LAT collaboration recently released a new
catalog of 1,556 sources detected in the 10 GeV - 2 TeV range by the Large Area
Telescope (LAT) in the first 7 years of its operation (the 3FHL catalog). This
catalog is currently the most appropriate description of the sky that will be
energetically accessible to CTA. Here, we discuss a detailed analysis of the
extragalactic source population (mostly blazars) that will be studied in the
near future by CTA. This analysis is based on simulations built from the
expected array configurations and information reported in the 3FHL catalog.
These results show the improvements that CTA will provide on the extragalactic
TeV source population studies, which will be carried out by Key Science
Projects as well as dedicated proposals.