Presentation #202.01 in the session “Peta-electronvolt Cosmic Accelerators in the Milky Way”.
The High Energy Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory, which consists of an array of water Cherenkov detectors located in Puebla, Mexico, is capable of continuously monitoring the very high-energy (VHE, E > ~300 GeV) gamma-ray sky. The high duty cycle (95%) and wide field-of-view (~2 sr) make it an ideal instrument for developing source catalogs as well as monitoring the sky for transient phenomena. With over five years of accumulated data, HAWC provides a window to the most powerful cosmic accelerators in the universe: supernova remnants, pulsar wind nebula, and active galactic nuclei. A recent upgrade to HAWC has increased the sensitivity of the experiment above 10 TeV, allowing for deeper knowledge of these sources.
In this talk, I will provide an overview of recent results from HAWC. This includes the highest-energy gamma-ray skymap (> 100 TeV), the discovery of a new source class (TeV halos), and the observation of a 100 TeV gamma rays from a superbubble surrounding a region of massive star formation where cosmic rays have been freshly accelerated.