All-sky sensitivity of HAWC to Gamma-Ray Bursts [HEAP]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1508.04120


The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory is a ground-based TeV gamma-ray observatory in the state of Puebla, Mexico at an altitude of 4100 m. Its 22,000 m$^2$ instrumented area, wide field of view ($\sim$2 sr), and >95% uptime make it an ideal instrument for discovering gamma-ray burst (GRB) emission at $\sim$100 GeV. Such a discovery would provide key information about the origins of prompt GRB emission as well as constraints on extra-galactic background light (EBL) models and the violation of Lorentz invariance. We will present prospects for discovering GRB emission at $\sim$100 GeV with a simple, all-sky search algorithm using HAWC data that is most sensitive to short GRBs. The search algorithm presented here can also be used to detect other short transients with timescales and fluxes similar to short GRBs.

Read this paper on arXiv…

J. Wood
Tue, 18 Aug 15
2/43

Comments: Presented at the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2015), The Hague, The Netherlands. See arXiv:1508.03327 for all HAWC contributions