We report on the redshift of the BL Lac object 3FGL J0909.0+2310 based on observations obtained with the OSIRIS Multi-Object Spectrograph (MOS) mounted on the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio Canarias. A ...redshift of 0.432 plus or minus 0.002 was obtained by the identification of three absorption features (Ca ii K&H and the G band) detected in the spectrum of the BL Lac host galaxy. The closest object to the BL Lac at an angular separation of 3.8 arcsec (~21 kpc at this distance) has a similar redshift of 0.431 plus or minus 0.002. This companion galaxy could be the most likely cause of the nuclear activity as postulated by studies based on more extended data sets and cosmological models. MOS allows us to study the object's neighbourhood within a field of view of approximately 7 x 2 arcmin2 and we find two small groups of galaxies at redshifts 0.28 and 0.39 which are probably not related to the activity of 3FGL J0909.0+2310.
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Gamma-ray Observatory is an extensive air shower detector operating in central Mexico that has recently completed its first two years of full operations. If ...for a burst like GRB 130427A at a redshift of 0.34 and a high-energy component following a power law with index 1.66, the high-energy component is extended to higher energies with no cutoff other than that from extragalactic background light attenuation, HAWC would observe gamma-rays with a peak energy of ∼300 GeV. This paper reports the results of HAWC observations of 64 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) detected by Swift and Fermi, including 3 GRBs that were also detected by the Large Area Telescope (Fermi-LAT). An ON/OFF analysis method is employed, searching on the timescale given by the observed light curve at keV-MeV energies and also on extended timescales. For all GRBs and timescales, no statistically significant excess of counts is found and upper limits on the number of gamma-rays and the gamma-ray flux are calculated. GRB 170206A, the third brightest short GRB detected by the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor on board the Fermi satellite (Fermi-GBM) and also detected by the LAT, occurred very close to zenith. The LAT measurements can neither exclude the presence of a synchrotron self-Compton component nor constrain its spectrum. Instead, the HAWC upper limits constrain the expected cutoff in an additional high-energy component to be less than for reasonable assumptions about the energetics and redshift of the burst.
Abstract
Extended very-high-energy (VHE; 0.1–100 TeV)
γ
-ray emission has been observed around several middle-aged pulsars and referred to as “TeV halos.” Their formation mechanism remains under ...debate. It is also unknown whether they are ubiquitous or related to a certain subgroup of pulsars. With 2321 days of observation, the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Gamma-Ray Observatory detected VHE
γ
-ray emission at the location of the radio-quiet pulsar PSR J0359+5414 with >6
σ
significance. By performing likelihood tests with different spectral and spatial models and comparing the TeV spectrum with multiwavelength observations of nearby sources, we show that this excess is consistent with a TeV halo associated with PSR J0359+5414, though future observation of HAWC and multiwavelength follow-ups are needed to confirm this nature. This new halo candidate is located in a noncrowded region in the outer galaxy. It shares similar properties to the other halos but its pulsar is younger and radio-quiet. Our observation implies that TeV halos could commonly exist around pulsars and their formation does not depend on the configuration of the pulsar magnetosphere.
The close location of the HAWC observatory to the largest volcano in Mexico allows to perform a search for neutrino-induced horizontal muon and tau charged leptons. The section of the volcano located ...at the horizon reaches values of slant depth larger than 8 km of rock, making it an excellent shield for the cosmic ray horizontal background. We report the search method and background suppression technique developed for the detection of Earth-skimming neutrinos with HAWC, as well as a model that describes the remaining background produced by scattered muons. We show that by increasing the detection energy threshold we could use HAWC to search for neutrino-induced charged leptons.
We present a new catalog of TeV gamma-ray sources using 1523 days of data from the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory. The catalog represents the most sensitive survey of the northern ...gamma-ray sky at energies above several TeV, with three times the exposure compared to the previous HAWC catalog, 2HWC. We report 65 sources detected at ≥5 significance, along with the positions and spectral fits for each source. The catalog contains eight sources that have no counterpart in the 2HWC catalog, but are within 1° of previously detected TeV emitters, and 20 sources that are more than 1° away from any previously detected TeV source. Of these 20 new sources, 14 have a potential counterpart in the fourth Fermi Large Area Telescope catalog of gamma-ray sources. We also explore potential associations of 3HWC sources with pulsars in the Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF) pulsar catalog and supernova remnants in the Galactic supernova remnant catalog.
ABSTRACT A survey of the inner Galaxy region of Galactic longitude and latitude is performed using one-third of the High Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory, operated during its construction phase. ...To address the ambiguities arising from unresolved sources in the data, we use a maximum likelihood technique to identify point source candidates. Ten sources and candidate sources are identified in this analysis. Eight of these are associated with known TeV sources but not all have differential fluxes that are compatible with previous measurements. Three sources are detected with significances >5 after accounting for statistical trials, and are associated with known TeV sources.
The first TeV gamma-ray source with no lower energy counterparts, TeV J2032+4130, was discovered by HEGRA. It appears in the third HAWC catalog as 3HWC J2031+415 and it is a bright TeV gamma-ray ...source whose emission has previously been resolved as 2 sources: HAWC J2031+415 and HAWC J2030+409. While HAWC J2030+409 has since been associated with the \emph{Fermi-LAT} Cygnus Cocoon, no such association for HAWC J2031+415 has yet been found. In this work, we investigate the spectrum and energy-dependent morphology of HAWC J2031+415. We associate HAWC J2031+415 with the pulsar PSR J2032+4127 and perform a combined multi-wavelength analysis using radio, X-ray, and \(\gamma\)-ray emission. We conclude that HAWC J2031+415 and, by extension, TeV J2032+4130 are most probably a pulsar wind nebula (PWN) powered by PSR J2032+4127.
We report an observation of ultra-high energy (UHE) gamma rays from the Galactic Center region, using seven years of data collected by the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory. The HAWC ...data are best described as a point-like source (HAWC J1746-2856) with a power-law spectrum (\(\mathrm{d}N/\mathrm{d}E=\phi(E/26 \,\text{TeV})^{\gamma}\)), where \(\gamma=-2.88 \pm 0.15_{\text{stat}} - 0.1_{\text{sys}} \) and \(\phi=1.5 \times 10^{-15}\) (TeV cm\(^{2}\)s)\(^{-1}\) \(\pm\, 0.3_{\text{stat}}\,^{+0.08_{\text{sys}}}_{-0.13_{\text{sys}}}\) extending from 6 to 114 TeV. We find no evidence of a spectral cutoff up to \(100\) TeV using HAWC data. Two known point-like gamma-ray sources are spatially coincident with the HAWC gamma-ray excess: Sgr A\(^{*}\) (HESS J1745-290) and the Arc (HESS J1746-285). We subtract the known flux contribution of these point sources from the measured flux of HAWC J1746-2856 to exclude their contamination and show that the excess observed by HAWC remains significant (\(>\)5\(\sigma\)) with the spectrum extending to \(>\)100 TeV. Our result supports that these detected UHE gamma rays can originate via hadronic interaction of PeV cosmic-ray protons with the dense ambient gas and confirms the presence of a proton PeVatron at the Galactic Center.
The High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Gamma-Ray Observatory located on the side of the Sierra Negra volcano in Mexico, has been fully operational since 2015. The HAWC collaboration has recently ...significantly improved their extensive-air-shower reconstruction algorithms, which has notably advanced the observatory performance. The energy resolution for primary gamma rays with energies below 1~TeV was improved by including a noise-suppression algorithm. Corrections have also been made to systematic errors in direction fitting related to the detector and shower plane inclinations, \(\mathcal{O}(0.1^{\circ})\) biases in highly inclined showers, as well as enhancements to the core reconstruction. The angular resolution for gamma rays approaching the HAWC array from large zenith angles (\(> 37^{\circ}\)) has improved by a factor of four at the highest energies (\(> 70\)~TeV) as compared to previous reconstructions. The inclusion of a lateral distribution function fit to the extensive air shower footprint on the array to separate gamma-ray primaries from cosmic-ray ones, based on the resulting \(\chi^{2}\) values, improved the background rejection performance at all inclinations. At large zenith angles, the improvement in significance is a factor of four compared to previous HAWC publications. These enhancements have been verified by observing the Crab Nebula, which is an overhead source for the HAWC Observatory. We show that the sensitivity to Crab-like point sources (\(E^{-2.63}\)) with locations overhead to 30\(^{\circ}\) zenith is comparable or less than 10\% of the Crab Nebula's flux between 2 and 50~TeV. Thanks to these improvements, HAWC can now detect more sources, including the Galactic Center.
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