Sensitivity of HAWC to Gamma Ray Bursts

摘要

HAWC is a ground based very high-energy gamma ray detector under construction in Mexico at an altitude of 4100 m a.s.l. Higher altitude, improved design and a larger physical size used to reject CR background, make HAWC 10-20 times more sensitive than its predecessor Milagro. HAWC's large field of view, ≈2sr, and over 90% duty cycle make it ideal to search for GRBs. We review the sensitivity of HAWC to GRBs with two independent data acquisition systems. We show that some of the brightest GRBs observed by Fermi LAT (e.g. GRB 090510) could result in >5 σ observation by HAWC. The observations (or limits) of GRBs by HAWC will provide information on the high-energy spectra of GRBs. The high-energy spectra will teach us about extra galactic background light, the Lorentz boost factor of the jets tha power GRBs and/or particle acceleration models of GRBs. Finally we present limits on >10 GeV emission from GRB 111016B, recently studied with HAWC's engineering array VAMOS.