Physics
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2269
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item An All-Sky Search for Bursts of Very High Energy Gamma Rays with HAWC(2016) Wood, Joshua Randall; Goodman, Jordan; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A new ground-based wide-field extensive air shower array known as the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory promises a new window to monitoring the ~100 GeV gamma-ray sky with the potential for detecting a high energy spectral cutoff in gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). It represents a roughly 15 times sensitivity gain over the previous generation of wide-field gamma-ray air shower instruments and is able to detect the Crab Nebula at high significance (>5 sigma) with each daily transit. Its wide field-of-view (~2 sr) and >95% uptime make it an ideal instrument for detecting GRB emission at ~100 GeV with an expectation for observing ~1 GRB per year based on existing measurements of GRB emission. An all-sky, self-triggered search for VHE emission produced by GRBs with HAWC has been developed. We present the results of this search on three characteristic GRB emission timescales, 0.2 seconds, 1 second, and 10 seconds, in the first year of the fully-populated HAWC detector which is the most sensitive dataset to date. No significant detections were found, allowing us to place upper limits on the rate of GRBs containing appreciable emission in the ~100 GeV band. These constraints exclude previously unexamined parameter space.Item A Search for Short Duration Very High Energy Emission from Gamma-Ray Bursts(2005-08-29) Noyes, David Carl; Sullivan, Gregory W; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Milagro is a water-Cherenkov detector capable of observing air showers produced by gamma rays with primary energies of approximately 100 GeV and higher. The wide field of view (~ 2 sr) and high duty cycle (>90%) of Milagro make it ideal for searching for transient emission from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The median energy of photons detected by Milagro is a few TeV, but the effective area is still relatively large at a few hundred GeV (~50 m^2 at 100 GeV). This results in a gamma-ray fluence sensitivity comparable to previous satellite detectors at keV energies. Measurements have been made of GRB spectra up to a few tens of GeV with no sign of a cutoff, however much is still unknown about the nature and existence of this Very High Energy (VHE) component. Additionally, gamma/gamma absorption from infrared background photons or from the optically thick region of the burst source complicate observations of this VHE component. However, many models predict VHE emission from GRBs through mechanisms such as synchrotron self-Compton processes. In the absence of a GRB localization provided by another instrument, the Milagro data is searched independently for VHE emission from GRBs. In 2.3 years of searching for bursts with durations ranging from 250 us to 40 s, no significant evidence was observed for VHE emission from GRBs. Models for different GRB parameters (such as redshift and isotropic energy distributions) are used to constrain the VHE spectrum of GRBs.