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A search for spectral hardening in HAWC sources above 56 TeV

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 Added by Kelly Malone
 Publication date 2021
  fields Physics
and research's language is English




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The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory is a wide-field-of-view gamma-ray observatory that is optimized to detect gamma rays between ~300 GeV and several hundred TeV. The HAWC Collaboration recently released their third source catalog (3HWC), which contains 65 sources. One of these sources, the ultra-high-energy gamma-ray source 3HWC J1908+063, may exhibit a hardening of the spectral index at the highest energies (above 56 TeV). At least two populations of particles are needed to satisfactorily explain the highest energy emission. This second component could be leptonic or hadronic in origin. If it is hadronic in origin, it would imply the presence of protons with energies up to $sim$1 PeV near the source. We have searched other 3HWC sources for the presence of this spectral hardening feature. If observed, this would imply that the sources could make good PeVatron candidates.



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We present the first catalog of gamma-ray sources emitting above 56 and 100 TeV with data from the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory, a wide field-of-view observatory capable of detecting gamma rays up to a few hundred TeV. Nine sources are observed above 56 TeV, all of which are likely Galactic in origin. Three sources continue emitting past 100 TeV, making this the highest-energy gamma-ray source catalog to date. We report the integral flux of each of these objects. We also report spectra for three highest-energy sources and discuss the possibility that they are PeVatrons.
We report on the search of astrophysical gamma rays with energies in the 100 TeV to several PeV range arriving in directional and temporal coincidence with public alerts from HAWC (TeV gamma rays) and IceCube (neutrinos above ~100 TeV). The observations have been performed with the Carpet-2 air-shower detector at the Baksan Neutrino Observatory, working in the photon-friendly mode since 2018. Photon candidate showers are selected by their low muon content. No significant excess of the photon candidates have been observed, and upper limits on gamma-ray fluences associated with the alerts are obtained. For events with good viewing conditions, the Carpet-2 effective area for photons is of the order of the IceCube effective area for neutrinos of the same energy, so the constraints start to probe the production of neutrinos in fast flares of Galactic sources.
414 - Kelly Malone 2019
We present the first catalogs of the highest-energy (above 56 TeV and 100 TeV) gamma-ray sources seen by the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory. The wide field-of-view of HAWC naturally lends itself to unbiased all-sky surveys and newly developed event-by-event gamma-ray energy reconstruction algorithms have allowed unprecedented energy resolution. The sources presented here are the highest-energy sources ever detected. All are coincident with known lower-energy gamma-ray sources within our Galaxy. These objects may have implications for the sources of Galactic cosmic rays; since Galactic CRs have been observed up to PeV energies, sources accelerating particles to these energies must exist. These sources, called PeVatrons, would have corresponding hard gamma-ray spectra that extend to high energies without any spectral break or cutoff. We will present measurements of the spectra of these highest-energy gamma-ray sources and discuss if any of them can be identified as PeVatron candidates.
The High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory records the air showers produced by cosmic rays and gamma rays at a rate of about 20 kHz. While the events observed by HAWC are 99.9% hadronic cosmic rays, this background can be strongly suppressed using topological cuts that preferentially select electromagnetic air showers. Using this capability of HAWC, we can create a sample of air showers dominated by gamma rays and cosmic electrons and positrons. HAWC is one of the few operating observatories capable of measuring showers produced by electron and positron primaries above 1 TeV, and can record these showers from two-thirds of the sky each day. We describe the sensitivity of HAWC to leptonic cosmic rays, and discuss prospects for the measurement of the combined $e^+e^-$ flux and possible approaches for positron and electron charge separation with the HAWC detector.
Due to the high energies and long distances involved, astrophysical observations provide a unique opportunity to test possible signatures of Lorentz Invariance Violation (LIV). Superluminal LIV enables the decay of photons at high energy over relatively short distances, giving astrophysical spectra which have a hard cutoff above this energy. The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory is the most sensitive currently-operating gamma-ray observatory in the world above 10 TeV. Together with the recent development of an energy-reconstruction algorithm for HAWC using an artificial neural network, HAWC can make detailed measurements of gamma-ray energies above 100 TeV. With these observations, HAWC can limit the LIV energy scale greater than $10^{31}$ eV, over 800 times the Planck energy scale. This limit on LIV is over 60 times more constraining than the best previous value for $rm E_{LIV}^{(1)}$.
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