Solar Event Simulations using the HAWC Scaler System

Understand

The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory is an air shower array located near the volcano Sierra Negra in Mexico.

• The observatory has a scaler system sensitive to low energy cosmic rays (the geomagnetic cutoff for the site is 8 GV) suitable for conducting studies of solar or heliospheric transients such as Ground Level Enhancements (GLEs) and Forbush decreases.
• In this work we present the simulation of the HAWC response to these phenomena.
• We computed HAWC effective areas for different array configurations (different selection of photomultiplier tubes per detector) relevant for Forbush decreases and GLEs.