Search for GeV Emission from Gamma-Ray Bursts Using Milagro Scaler Data

Abstract

Milagro is a wide field (2 sr) high duty cycle (>90%) ground-based water Cherenkov detector built to observe extensive air showers produced by high energy particles interacting in the Earth's atmosphere. Milagro records extensive air showers in the energy range 100 GeV to 100 TeV, as well as the counting rates of the individual photomultiplier tubes in the detector. The individual tube counting rates can be used to detect transient emission above ∼1 GeV. We have used the counting rate (scaler) data to search for high energy emission from a sample of 98 gamma-ray bursts (GRB) detected from January 2000 through June 2006 by BATSE, BeppoSax, HETE-2, INTEGRAL, Swift or the IPN. No evidence for emission from any of the bursts has been found, and we present fluence upper limits from these bursts.

The HAWC experiment and its sensitivity to gamma-ray bursts

“…Note that, in similar conditions, the VAMOS sensitivity is comparable to the one of the much larger Milagro experiment that operated at a lower altitude of 2630 m (see e.g. [8]). …”