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Very-high-energy gamma rays (traditionally above ∼100 GeV) are the most energetic cosmic electromagnetic radiation observed and trace the presence of charged particles of even higher energy. These gamma rays can provide unique views of the strong magnetic fields around neutron stars and the strong gravitational fields around neutron stars and black holes. At the other extreme of density, they can probe the environment of cosmic voids. This white paper briefly summarizes what can be learned over the coming decade about extreme astrophysical environments through ground-based gamma-ray observations over the 20 GeV to 300 TeV range. The majority of the material is drawn directly from Science with the Cherenkov Telescope Array, which describes the overall science case for CTA. We request that authors wishing to cite results contained in this white paper cite the original work. 

Many low-threshold experiments observe sharply rising event rates of yet unknown origins below a few hundred eV, and larger than expected from known backgrounds. Due to the significant impact of this excess on the dark matter or neutrino sensitivity of these experiments, a collective effort has been started to share the knowledge about the individual observations. For this, the EXCESS Workshop was initiated. In its first iteration in June 2021, ten rare event search collaborations contributed to this initiative via talks and discussions. The contributing collaborations were CONNIE, CRESST, DAMIC, EDELWEISS, MINER, NEWS-G, NUCLEUS, RICOCHET, SENSEI and SuperCDMS. They presented data about their observed energy spectra and known backgrounds together with details about the respective measurements. In this paper, we summarize the presented information and give a comprehensive overview of the similarities and differences between the distinct measurements. The provided data is furthermore publicly available on the workshop's data repository together with a plotting tool for visualization.