No Arabic abstract
Studying gamma-ray emission by Galactic objects is key to understanding the origins and acceleration mechanisms of Galactic cosmic ray electrons and hadrons. The HAWC observatory provides an unprecedented view of the gamma-ray sky at TeV energies and is particularly suited for the study of Galactic objects. However, the interpretation of the measured data poses several challenges. The high density of sources and source candidates can cause source confusion and make it harder to disentangle the origin of the emission. The relatively low angular resolution of HAWC, compared to instruments in optical or radio wavelengths, can further cause the emission of neighboring sources to bleed into each other or even make them look like one extended source. On the other hand, with its wide field of view, HAWC is uniquely suited for the study of extended sources. However, this requires the simultaneous modeling of both their morphology and emission spectrum. Joint likelihood fits to data taken over a larger range of energies can help overcome these challenges and achieve the full potential of the HAWC detector. In this presentation, we will discuss how systematic uncertainties related to joint likelihood fits can affect the measurements.
A number of Galactic sources emit GeV-TeV gamma rays that are produced through leptonic and/or hadronic mechanisms. Spectral analysis in this energy range is crucial in order to understand the emission mechanisms. The HAWC Gamma-Ray Observatory, with a large field of view and location at $19^circ$ N latitude, is surveying the Galactic Plane from high Galactic longitudes down to near the Galactic Center. Data taken with partially-constructed HAWC array in 2013-2014 exhibit TeV gamma-ray emission along the Galactic Plane. A high-level analysis likelihood framework for HAWC, also presented at this meeting, has been developed concurrently with the Multi-Mission Maximum Likelihood (3ML) architecture to deconvolve the Galactic sources and to perform multi-instrument analysis. It has been tested on early HAWC data and the same method will be applied on HAWC data with the full array. I will present preliminary results on Galactic sources from TeV observations with HAWC and from joint analysis on Fermi and HAWC data in GeV-TeV energy range.
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) gamma-ray observatory is a wide field-of-view observatory sensitive to 500 GeV - 100 TeV gamma rays and cosmic rays. With its observations over 2/3 of the sky every day, the HAWC observatory is sensitive to a wide variety of astrophysical sources, including possible gamma rays from dark matter. Dark matter annihilation and decay in the Milky Way Galaxy should produce gamma-ray signals across many degrees on the sky. The HAWC instantaneous field-of-view of 2 sr enables observations of extended regions on the sky, such as those from dark matter in the Galactic halo. Here we show limits on the dark matter annihilation cross-section and decay lifetime from HAWC observations of the Galactic halo with 15 months of data. These are some of the most robust limits on TeV and PeV dark matter, largely insensitive to the dark matter morphology. These limits begin to constrain models in which PeV IceCube neutrinos are explained by dark matter which primarily decays into hadrons.
Background showers triggered by hadrons represent over 99.9% of all particles arriving at ground-based gamma-ray observatories. An important stage in the data analysis of these observatories, therefore, is the removal of hadron-triggered showers. Currently, the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) gamma-ray observatory employs an algorithm based on a single cut in two variables, unlike other ground-based gamma-ray observatories (e.g. H.E.S.S., VERITAS), which employ a large number of variables to separate the primary particles. In this work, we explore machine learning techniques (Boosted Decision Trees and Neural Networks) to identify the primary particles detected by HAWC. Our new gamma/hadron separation techniques were tested on data from the Crab nebula, the standard reference in Very High Energy astronomy, showing an improvement compared to the standard HAWC background rejection method.
Stars within the innermost part of the Nuclear Star Cluster can reach orbital velocities up to a few percent of the light speed. As analyzed by Rafikov (2020), Doppler boosting of stellar light may be of relevance at the pericenter of stellar orbits, especially with the upcoming high-precision photometry in the near- and mid-infrared bands. Here we analyze the previously neglected effect of infrared spectral index of monitored objects on the Doppler-boosted continuum emission in a narrow band. In contrast to main-sequences stars, the detected compact infrared-excess dust-enshrouded objects have an enhanced Doppler-boosting effect by as much as an order of magnitude, with the variability amplitude of the order of ten percent for the most eccentric orbits. In a similar way, pulsars dominated by non-thermal synchrotron emission are also expected to exhibit a stronger Doppler-boosted signal by a factor of at least four in comparison with canonical S stars. In case the stellar orbit is robustly determined, the relative flux variation can thus provide hints about the nature of the objects. For extended dust-enshrouded objects, such as G1, that are variable due to tidal, ellipsoidal, bow-shock, and irradiation effects, the subtraction of the expected Doppler-boosting variations will help to better comprehend their internal physics. In addition, the relative flux variability due to higher-order relativistic effects is also modified for different negative spectral indices in a way that it can obtain both positive and negative values with the relative variability of the order of one percent.
We present TeV gamma-ray observations of the Crab Nebula, the standard reference source in ground-based gamma-ray astronomy, using data from the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Gamma-Ray Observatory. In this analysis we use two independent energy-estimation methods that utilize extensive air shower variables such as the core position, shower angle, and shower lateral energy distribution. In contrast, the previously published HAWC energy spectrum roughly estimated the shower energy with only the number of photomultipliers triggered. This new methodology yields a much improved energy resolution over the previous analysis and extends HAWCs ability to accurately measure gamma-ray energies well beyond 100 TeV. The energy spectrum of the Crab Nebula is well fit to a log parabola shape $left(frac{dN}{dE} = phi_0 left(E/textrm{7 TeV}right)^{-alpha-betalnleft(E/textrm{7 TeV}right)}right)$ with emission up to at least 100 TeV. For the first estimator, a ground parameter that utilizes fits to the lateral distribution function to measure the charge density 40 meters from the shower axis, the best-fit values are $phi_o$=(2.35$pm$0.04$^{+0.20}_{-0.21}$)$times$10$^{-13}$ (TeV cm$^2$ s)$^{-1}$, $alpha$=2.79$pm$0.02$^{+0.01}_{-0.03}$, and $beta$=0.10$pm$0.01$^{+0.01}_{-0.03}$. For the second estimator, a neural network which uses the charge distribution in annuli around the core and other variables, these values are $phi_o$=(2.31$pm$0.02$^{+0.32}_{-0.17}$)$times$10$^{-13}$ (TeV cm$^2$ s)$^{-1}$, $alpha$=2.73$pm$0.02$^{+0.03}_{-0.02}$, and $beta$=0.06$pm$0.01$pm$0.02. The first set of uncertainties are statistical; the second set are systematic. Both methods yield compatible results. These measurements are the highest-energy observation of a gamma-ray source to date.