A high-level analysis framework for HAWC

Understand

The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory continuously observes gamma-rays between 100 GeV to 100 TeV in an instantaneous field of view of about 2 steradians above the array.

• The large amount of raw data, the importance of small number statistics, the large dynamic range of gamma-ray signals in time (1 - $10^8$ sec) and angular extent (0.1 - 100 degrees), and the growing need to directly compare results from different observatories pose some special challenges for the analysis of HAWC data.
• To address these needs, we have designed and implemented a modular analysis framework based on the method of maximum likelihood.
• The framework facilitates the calculation of a binned Poisson Log-likelihood value for a given physics model (i.e., source model), data set, and detector response.