Abstract
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory is an all-sky surveying instrument sensitive to gamma rays and cosmic rays from 100GeV to 100TeV. With its 2sr instantaneous field of view and a duty cycle of > 95%, HAWC is carrying out an unbiased survey of the Northern sky and is monitoring known flaring sources and searching for transients. HAWC operation began mid-2013 with a partially-completed detector. The array was terminated in 2015. We here summarize the status of the observatory, and highlight its first scientific results, resulting from the first year of data taking after completion of the detector. In particular, we will present the HAWC map of the sky at tens of TeV.
Highlights
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory is an all-sky surveying instrument sensitive to gamma rays and cosmic rays from 100GeV to 100TeV
With its 2sr instantaneous field of view and a duty cycle of > 95%, High Altitude Water-Cherenkov Telescope (HAWC) is carrying out an unbiased survey of the Northern sky and is monitoring known flaring sources and searching for transients
While the imaging air Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) reach their best sensitivity at about 1 TeV, the HAWC observatory is sensitive to photons of energy above several TeVs
Summary
Its wide field-of-view, with an instantaneous aperture of 2sr, covers more than 15% of the sky so that the detector is exposed to two-thirds of the sky during a 24-hour period This makes HAWC an ideal survey and monitoring observatory, complementary to the pointing instruments at TeV energies, the imaging air Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs), such as H.E.S.S., MAGIC, VERITAS, and the upcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). HAWC sensitivity curve to steady sources peaks at 10 TeV and is constant for extended sources up to three degrees across [1] These two key features make HAWC an ideal instrument to discover and study Galactic gamma-ray sources produced by the interactions of the highest energy cosmic rays. We will review the HAWC map of the sky at tens of TeV obtained by the HAWC Collaboration after collecting one year of data
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