Particle Astrophysics with HAWC and Milagro

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。它将为该小组提供资金，用于进行TeV宇宙伽马射线实验Milagro和Milagro的后继者HAWC。极高能伽马射线天文学探测已知宇宙中一些最极端的环境。已知的TeV伽马射线源包括具有强烈引力和/或磁场的致密物体（黑洞或中子星）：例子包括我们星系内的超新星遗迹和我们星系外的活动星系核。可能的新TeV源包括伽马射线爆发，微类星体，以及宇宙射线与我们银河系中物质相互作用的漫发射。Milagro是第一个TeV探测器，在超过几百GeV的能量下连续监测整个头顶天空，运行于2000-2008年。最终的校准和改进的设备的时间依赖性的校正将使一个可靠的能量标度和米拉格罗发现的伽马射线源的能谱的确定。另一个产品将是全面的天空地图，其力量将用于搜索所有费米源的TeV发射。HAWC也将能够灵敏地观测到许多费米源。该计划的更广泛影响包括向高中和大专院校介绍Milagro，以及为中学教师举办“科学前沿”研讨会。Milagro一直积极地让学生和公众接触到该领域的兴奋，并且是加入Quarknet的第一批粒子天体物理学实验之一-这是一个通过让课堂教师参与研究将活跃的物理实验带入课堂的计划。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). It will provide funds for this group to work on Milagro, a TeV cosmic gamma ray experiment, and HAWC, a successor to Milagro. Very high energy gamma ray astronomy probes some of the most extreme environments in the known universe. Known sources of TeV gamma rays include compact objects (black holes or neutron stars) with intense gravitational and/or magnetic fields: examples include supernova remnants within our galaxy and active galactic nuclei outside of our galaxy. Possible new TeV sources include gamma ray bursts, micro-quasars, and diffuse emission from cosmic rays interacting with matter in our own galaxy. Milagro, the first TeV detector continuously monitoring the entire overhead sky at energies above a few hundred GeV, operated 2000-2008. Final calibrations and improved corrections for time dependences of the apparatus will enable a reliable energy scale and the determination of the energy spectrum of the gamma ray sources that Milagro discovered. Another product will be comprehensive sky maps, whose power will be used to search for TeV emission of all Fermi sources. HAWC will also be able to sensitively observe many of the Fermi sources. The broader impact of the program includes presentations of Milagro to high schools and junior colleges and a 'Frontiers in Science' workshop for secondary school teachers. Milagro has been active in exposing students and the general public to the excitement of the field and was one of the first Particle Astrophysics experiments to join Quarknet - a program to bring active physics experiments into the classroom by involving classroom teachers in research.