English

Standardized Formats for Gamma-Ray Analysis Applied to HAWC Observatory Data

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics 2021-09-10 v1 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

A wide range of data formats and proprietary software have traditionally been used in gamma-ray astronomy, usually developed for a single specific mission or experiment. However, in recent years there has been an increasing effort towards making astronomical data open and easily accessible. Within the gamma-ray community this has translated to the creation of a common data format across different gamma-ray observatories: the "gamma-astro-data-format" (GADF). Based on a similar premise, open-source analysis packages, such as Gammapy, are being developed and aim to provide a single, robust tool which suits the needs of many experiments at once. In this contribution we show that data from the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory can be made compatible with the GADF and present the first GADF-based production of event lists and instrument response functions for a ground-based wide-field instrument. We use these data products to reproduce with excellent agreement the published HAWC Crab spectrum using Gammapy. Having a common data format and analysis tools facilitates joint analysis between different experiments and effective data sharing. This will be especially important for next-generation instruments, such as the proposed Southern Wide-field Gamma-ray Observatory (SWGO) and the planned Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2109.04097,
  title  = {Standardized Formats for Gamma-Ray Analysis Applied to HAWC Observatory Data},
  author = {Laura Olivera-Nieto and Vikas Joshi and Harm Schoorlemmer and Axel Donath},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2109.04097},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

Submitted at the 37th International Cosmic Ray conference (ICRC 2021) under the reference PoS(ICRC2021)727

R2 v1 2026-06-24T05:48:56.910Z