No Arabic abstract
The Milagro water Cherenkov detector near Los Alamos, New Mexico, has been operated as a sky monitor at energies of a few TeV between February 1997 and April 1998. Serving as a test run for the full Milagro detector, Milagrito has taken data during the strong and long-lasting 1997 flare of Mrk 501. We present results from the analysis of Mrk 501 and compare the excess and background rates with expectations from the detector simulations.
We present results from daily monitoring of gamma rays in the energy range $sim0.5$ to $sim100$ TeV with the first 17 months of data from the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory. Its wide field of view of 2 steradians and duty cycle of $>95$% are unique features compared to other TeV observatories that allow us to observe every source that transits over HAWC for up to $sim6$ hours each sidereal day. This regular sampling yields unprecedented light curves from unbiased measurements that are independent of seasons or weather conditions. For the Crab Nebula as a reference source we find no variability in the TeV band. Our main focus is the study of the TeV blazars Markarian (Mrk) 421 and Mrk 501. A spectral fit for Mrk 421 yields a power law index $Gamma=2.21 pm0.14_{mathrm{stat}}pm0.20_{mathrm{sys}}$ and an exponential cut-off $E_0=5.4 pm 1.1_{mathrm{stat}}pm 1.0_{mathrm{sys}}$ TeV. For Mrk 501, we find an index $Gamma=1.60pm 0.30_{mathrm{stat}} pm 0.20_{mathrm{sys}}$ and exponential cut-off $E_0=5.7pm 1.6_{mathrm{stat}} pm 1.0_{mathrm{sys}}$ TeV. The light curves for both sources show clear variability and a Bayesian analysis is applied to identify changes between flux states. The highest per-transit fluxes observed from Mrk 421 exceed the Crab Nebula flux by a factor of approximately five. For Mrk 501, several transits show fluxes in excess of three times the Crab Nebula flux. In a comparison to lower energy gamma-ray and X-ray monitoring data with comparable sampling we cannot identify clear counterparts for the most significant flaring features observed by HAWC.
Energy spectra of gamma-ray blazars may contain an imprint from the cosmic infrared background radiation due to gamma-ray absorption (pair-production) by soft photons constituting the extragalactic background light (EBL). The signature of this imprint depends on the spectral shape of the EBL. In this work we correct the observed spectra of Mrk 421 and Mrk 501 for absorption using different possible realizations of the EBL, consistent with the most recent detections and limits. We present the intrinsic gamma-ray spectrum of these sources for the different EBL scenarios. These spectra reveal their true peak energy and luminosities, which provide important information on the nature and physical characteristics of the particle acceleration mechanism operating in these sources.
We present the results of a multiwavelength campaign for Mrk 501 performed in March 1996 with ASCA, EGRET, Whipple, and optical telescopes. In the X-ray band, a spectral break was observed around 2 keV. We report here for the first time the detection of high-energy gamma-ray flux from Mrk 501 with EGRET with 3.5 sigma significance (E>100 MeV). Higher flux was also observed in April/May 1996, with 4.0 sigma significance for E>100 MeV, and 5.2 sigma significance for E>500 MeV. The gamma-ray spectrum was measured to be flatter than most of the gamma-ray blazars. We find that the multiband spectrum in 1996 is consistent with that calculated from a one-zone SSC model in a homogeneous region. In the context of this model, we investigate the values of the magnetic field strength and the beaming factor allowed by the observational results. We compare the March 1996 multiwavelength spectrum with that in the flare state in April 1997. Between these two epochs, the TeV flux increase is well correlated with that observed in keV range. The keV and TeV amplitudes during the April 1997 flare are accurately reproduced, assuming that the population of synchrotron photons in 1996 are scattered by the newly injected relativistic electrons, having maximum energies of G_max = 6.0e6. However, the TeV spectrum observed during March 1996 campaign is flatter than predicted by our models. We find that this cannot be explained by either higher order Comptonization or the contribution of the `seed IR photons from the host galaxy for the first-order external radiation Comptonization.
Milagrito, a detector sensitive to gamma-rays at TeV energies, monitored the northern sky during the period February 1997 through May 1998. With a large field of view and high duty cycle, this instrument was used to perform a search for TeV counterparts to gamma-ray bursts. Within the Milagrito field of view 54 gamma-ray bursts at keV energies were observed by the Burst And Transient Satellite Experiment (BATSE) aboard the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory. This paper describes the results of a preliminary analysis to search for TeV emission correlated with BATSE detected bursts. Milagrito detected an excess of events coincident both spatially and temporally with GRB 970417a, with chance probability $2.8 times 10^{-5}$ within the BATSE error radius. No other significant correlations were detected. Since 54 bursts were examined the chance probability of observing an excess with this significance in any of these bursts is $1.5 times 10^{-3}$. The statistical aspects and physical implications of this result are discussed.
ANTARES is the largest high-energy neutrino telescope in the Northern Hemisphere. This contribution presents the results of a search, based on the ANTARES data collected over 17 months between November 2014 and April 2016, for high energy neutrino emission in coincidence with TeV $gamma$-ray flares from Markarian 421 and Markarian 501, two bright BL Lac extragalactic sources highly variable in flux, detected by the HAWC observatory. The analysis is based on an unbinned likelihood-ratio maximization method. The $gamma$-ray lightcurves (LC) for each source were used to search for temporally correlated neutrinos, that would be produced in pp or p-$gamma$ interactions. The impact of different flare selection criteria on the discovery neutrino flux is discussed. Plausible neutrino spectra derived from the observed $gamma$-ray spectra in addition to generic spectra $E^{-2}$ and $E^{-2.5}$ are tested.