Nuclear, Particle, Astroparticle and Cosmology (NUPAC) Seminars
Surveying the TeV sky with HAWC
Presented by Robert Lauer, UNM
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.
2:00 pm, Tuesday, August 25, 2015
PAIS-2540, PAIS
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A schedule of talks within the Department of Physics and Astronomy is available on the P&A web site at http://physics.unm.edu/pandaweb/events/index.php