A Survey of TeV emission from Galactic Supernova Remnants with HAWC

Understand

Supernova remnants (SNRs) have long been hypothesized as the main source of Galactic Cosmic Rays up to PeV energies.

• Some of them have indeed been shown to accelerate protons to TeV energies and above.
• But which of them are indeed efficient accelerators of protons and nuclei? And up to which energies can they accelerate these particles? Measurements of non-thermal emission, especially in the X-ray and gamma-ray regimes, are essential to answer these questions.
• The High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory, surveying the northern TeV gamma-ray sky, is currently the most sensitive wide field-of-view survey instrument in the VHE (very-high-energy, $>$100 GeV) range.