Events at Physics |
Events on Wednesday, February 17th, 2016
- Department Meeting
- Time: 12:15 pm
- Place: 5310 Chamberlin Hall
- NPAC (Nuclear/Particle/Astro/Cosmo) Forum
- Initial Results from HAWC on Gamma-Ray Bursts
- Time: 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
- Place: 5280 Chamberlin
- Speaker: Joshua Wood, University of Maryland
- Abstract: The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory is a new ground-based TeV gamma-ray observatory operating in the high mountains of Mexico that is giving us a unique view of the high-energy sky. Its high sensitivity, wide field of view (~2 sr), and >95% uptime make it an ideal instrument for discovering gamma-ray burst (GRB) emission at ~100 GeV. Such a discovery would provide key information about the origins of prompt GRB emission as well as constraints on extragalactic background light models and the violation of Lorentz invariance. In this talk we will review HAWC performance and present results concentrating on our initial search for very high energy gamma-ray emission from GRBs with significant sensitivity to short transients with energies as small as 50 GeV.
- Host: Stefan Westerhoff