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)提供资金的。它将为该小组提供资金，用于Milagro，TeV宇宙伽马射线实验，以及HAWC，Milagro的继任者。超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场和/或磁场的致密天体(黑洞或中子星)：例如我们银河系内的超新星遗迹和我们银河系外的活动星系核。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产生的漫射辐射。米拉格罗探测器是第一个以几百GeV以上的能量连续监测整个头顶天空的TeV探测器，运行于2000-2008年。对仪器的时间依赖性进行最后的校准和改进的校正，将能够确定可靠的能量标度，并确定Milagro发现的伽马射线源的能谱。另一个产品将是全面的天空地图，其能力将用于搜索所有费米源的TeV排放。HAWC还将能够敏感地观测到许多费米源。该计划的更广泛影响包括向高中和专科学校介绍米拉格罗，以及为中学教师举办的“科学前沿”研讨会。米拉格罗一直积极让学生和普通公众接触到这一领域的兴奋，并是首批加入Quarknet的粒子天体物理实验之一-Quarknet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.