Events Calendar
Surveying the TeV sky with HAWC
Tuesday August 25, 2015
| 2:00 pm
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Presenter: | Robert Lauer, UNM |
|---|---|---|
| Series: | Nuclear, Particle, Astroparticle and Cosmology (NUPAC) Seminars | |
| Abstract: |
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory was completed and
began full operation in early 2015. Located at an elevation of 4,100 m on the Sierra Negra volcano in the state of Puebla, Mexico, HAWC consists of 300 water tanks instrumented with 4 PMTs each. The array is optimized for detecting air showers produced by gamma rays with energies between 100 GeV and 100 TeV and can also be used to measure charged cosmic rays. A wide instantaneous field of view of ~2 sr and a duty cycle >95% allow HAWC to survey 2/3 of the sky every day. These unique capabilities make it possible to study many galactic gamma-ray sources and search the highly variable extra-galactic sky for flares from active galactic nuclei and gamma-ray bursts, providing new insights into astrophysical particle acceleration. In this talk, I will present first results from more than one year of observations with a partial array configuration. I will also discuss how HAWC can probe various scenarios in elementary particle physics and astrophysics, including propagation and interaction of TeV-scale particles and the search for signatures of dark matter annihilation. |
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| Host: | John Matthews | |
| Location: | PAIS-2540, PAIS | |
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