Título

Sensitivity of the High Altitude Water Cherenkov Detector to Sources of Multi-TeV Gamma Rays

Autor

MAURO JAVIER BONILLA ROSALES

Alberto Carramiñana Alonso

Raquel Díaz Hernández

Manuel Gerardo Corona Galindo

PEDRO AMADO MIRANDA ROMAGNOLI

DANIEL ROSA GONZALEZ

SERGIY SILICH

Ibrahim Daniel Torres Aguilar

Nivel de Acceso

Acceso Abierto

Resumen o descripción

The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory is an array oflarge water Cherenkov detectors sensitive to gamma rays and hadronic cosmicrays in the energy band between 100 GeV and 100 TeV. The observatory willbe used to measure high-energy protons and cosmic rays via detection of theenergetic secondary particles reaching the ground when one of these particlesinteracts in the atmosphere above the detector. HAWC is under constructionat a site 4100 meters above sea level on the northern slope of the volcano SierraNegra, which is located in central Mexico at 19ºN latitude. It is scheduledfor completion in 2014. In this paper we estimate the sensitivity of the HAWCinstrument to point-like and extended sources of gamma rays. The source fluxesare modeled using both unbroken power laws and power laws with exponentialcutoffs. HAWC, in one year, is sensitive to point sources with integral power-lawspectra as low as 5 × 10⁻¹³ cm⁻² sec⁻¹ above 2 TeV (approximately 50mCrab) over 5 sr of the sky. This is a conservative estimate based on simpleevent parameters and is expected to improve as the data analysis techniquesare refined. We discuss known TeV sources and the scientific contributions that HAWC can make to our understanding of particle acceleration in these sources.

Editor

Astroparticle Physics

Fecha de publicación

24 de junio de 2013

Tipo de publicación

Artículo

Versión de la publicación

Versión aceptada

Formato

application/pdf

Idioma

Inglés

Audiencia

Estudiantes

Investigadores

Público en general

Sugerencia de citación

Abeysekara, A. U., et al., (2013). Sensitivity of the High Altitude Water Cherenkov Detector to Sources of Multi-TeV Gamma Rays, Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 50-52:1-17

Repositorio Orígen

Repositorio Institucional del INAOE

Descargas

149

Comentarios



Necesitas iniciar sesión o registrarte para comentar.