Astroparticle Seminar

First Results and Prospects for the High Altitude Water Cherenkov Detector

John Pretz

Los Alamos National Lab

The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) gamma-ray observatory began science operations 1 Aug 2013 with ~1/3 of the full detector. The rest of the detector will be constructed within the next year. Even now, HAWC is the most sensitive, wide field of view (~2 sr), continuously operating, TeV gamma-ray observatory ever constructed. Every day HAWC observes the sky from a Declination of -30 deg to +70 deg. Sensitive between 100 GeV and 100 TeV, HAWC will be used to probe particle acceleration in Galactic and extra-Galactic sources, search for photon emission from objects with high dark matter content, directly search for slow-moving massive particles, and probe basic physics of high-energy particles traversing extreme distances. I will present the latest results from HAWC which includes significant detections of multiple known TeV sources as well as the sky map from the first few months of HAWC observations showing excess emission along the plane of the Galaxy as well as discuss prospects for operation of the full detector.