Search For New Sources Of Very-High-Energy Gamma Rays
Open Access
- Author:
- Mitchell, Kenya Aonye
- Area of Honors:
- Mathematical Sciences
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Miguel Alejandro Mostafa, Thesis Supervisor
Gina Brelsford, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- HAWC
gamma-ray astronomy
particle physics
astrophysics
physics
statistics
pulsar - Abstract:
- In January of 2021, the HAWC observatory released their third catalogue of very-high-energy gamma ray sources. In this catalogue, 20 of the 65 sources were labeled unassociated. Meaning of all previously discovered sources, they have no high energy counterpart within 1°. From these 20 sources, it was seen that three sources 3HWC J0621+382, 3HWC J0631+107, and 3HWC J1739+099 were closely associated with pulsars PSR J0622+3749, PSR J0631+1036, and PSR J1740+100 respectively. These pulsars are listed in the ANTF pulsar catalog. It is important that these three sources be further studied, as the pulsar association can give clues regarding the origin of gamma ray acceleration. To expand the investigation of these sources, a morphological and spectral analysis was conducted to determine changes in each source’s extension and level of emission. Comparisons between pulsar data and HAWC data were also conducted to verify that each experiment was seeing the same thing. Multiple software packages were utilized to visualize the data. The Multi-Mission Maximum Likelihood framework (3ML) in conjunction with the HAWC accelerated likelihood (HAL) plugin is used to fit source spectrums and determine morphology. After analyzing data from HAWC’s datasets of 1,523 days and 2,770 days, it was concluded that each source exhibited significant growth in intensity over time. Future work will include a multi-wavelength analysis using data from other gamma-ray experiments.