Looking for Gamma-ray Emission from TeV Binary Candidates with HAWC

Understand

The Milky Way contains hundreds of binary systems which are known to emit in radio and X-rays, but only a handful of binaries have been observed to produce very high-energy gamma rays.

• In addition, the emission mechanisms which produce the gamma rays in the few known sources are not well understood.
• To improve the statistics of binary sources in the TeV band, the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Gamma-ray Observatory, or HAWC, has begun to carry out a simultaneous survey of TeV binary candidates in the Northern Hemisphere between 100 GeV and 100 TeV.
• HAWC is a surface array that records air showers from cosmic rays and gamma rays with a high uptime and wide field of view, making it well-suited to observe time-dependent emission from objects such as TeV binaries.