Cosmic Ray Astrophysics using The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory in México

Abstract

Abstract. The High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) TeV gamma-ray Observatory in México is ready to search and study gamma-ray emission regions, extremely high-energy cosmic-ray sources, and to identify transient phenomena. With a better Gamma/Hadron rejection method than other similar experiments, it will play a key role in triggering multi-wavelength and multi-messenger studies of active galaxies (AGN), gammaray bursts (GRB), supernova remnants (SNR), pulsar wind nebulae (PWN), Galactic Plane Sources, and Cosmic Ray Anisotropies. It has an instantaneous field-of-view of ∼2 str, equivalent to 15% of the whole sky and continuous operation (24 hours per day). The results obtained by HAWC-111 (111 detectors in operation) were presented on the proceedings of the International Cosmic Ray Conference 2015 and in [1]. The results obtained by HAWC-300 (full operation) are now under analysis and will be published in forthcoming papers starting in 2017 (see preliminary results on http://www.hawc-observatory.org/news/). Here we present the HAWC contributions on cosmic ray astrophysics via anisotropies studies, summarizing the HAWC detector and its upgrading by the installation of "outriggers".