Events on Monday, October 7th, 2024
- Search for TeV Halos Using HAWC Data
- Time: 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
- Place: 5280 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Hongyi Wu, Physics PhD Graduate Student
- Abstract: Extended gamma-ray emission at TeV energies, known as TeV halos, has been observed around a few middle-aged isolated pulsars. It has been suggested that they may also be powered by millisecond pulsars (MSPs). Using data from the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory, we searched for extended gamma-ray emission around 36 isolated middle-aged pulsars and 57 MSPs. Through a stacking analysis comparing TeV flux models against a background-only hypothesis, we identified TeV halo-like emission from isolated middle-aged pulsars at a significance level of 5.10σ, but found no significant emission from MSPs. The results imply that TeV halos may commonly exist around middle-aged pulsars, while MSPs are not as efficient in producing them. These findings provide a method to identify pulsars that are invisible to radio, X-ray, and GeV gamma-ray observations, and have significant implications for the physics interpretation of the Galactic center GeV excess and high-latitude Galactic diffuse emission. Future works including HAWC and Fermi-LAT data analysis around TeV halo sources will also be discussed.
- Host: Ke Fang