Study of the IC 443 region with the HAWC observatory
Abstract
Supernova remnants are one potential source class considered a PeVatron (i.e. capable of accelerating cosmic rays above PeV energies). The shock fronts produced after the explosion of the supernova are ideal regions for particle acceleration. IC 443 is a supernova remnant that has been studied extensively at different wavelengths. Using 2966 days of gamma-ray data from the HAWC observatory, we study the emission of IC 443 with the objective of finding signatures of cosmic-ray acceleration at the PeV scale. Using a maximum likelihood method, we find a point source located at (=94.42, =22.35) that we associate with IC 443. The measured spectrum is a simple power law with an index of 0.18, which is consistent with previous TeV observations. Although we cannot confirm that IC 443 is a hadronic PeVatron, we do not find any sign that the spectrum has a cut off at tens of TeV energies, with the spectrum extending to 30 TeV. Furthermore, we also find a new extended component in the region whose emission is described by a simple power law with an index of 0.08 and which we call HAWC J0615+2213. While we show evidence that this new source might be a new TeV halo, we defer a detailed analysis of this new source to another publication.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2501.12613,
title = {Study of the IC 443 region with the HAWC observatory},
author = {R. Alfaro and C. Alvarez and M. Araya and J. C. Arteaga-Velázquez and D. Avila Rojas and H. A. Ayala Solares and R. Babu and A. Bernal and K. S. Caballero-Mora and T. Capistran and A. Carramiñana and S. Casanova and U. Cotti and J. Cotzomi and S. Coutiño de León and E. De la Fuente and D. Depaoli and P. Desiati and N. Di Lalla and R. Diaz Hernandez and B. L. Dingus and M. A. DuVernois and J. C. Díaz-Vélez and T. Ergin and C. Espinoza and K. Fang and N. Fraija and S. Fraija and J. A. García-González and H. Goksu and J. A. González-Cervera and M. M. González and J. A. Goodman and S. Groetsch and J. P. Harding and S. Hernández-Cadena and I. Herzog and J. Hinton and D. Huang and F. Hueyotl-Zahuantitla and P. Hüntemeyer and S. Kaufmann and A. Lara and J. Lee and H. León Vargas and J. T. Linnemann and A. L. Longinotti and G. Luis-Raya and K. Malone and O. Martinez and J. Martínez-Castro and J. A. Matthews and P. Miranda-Romagnoli and J. A. Montes and J. A. Morales-Soto and E. Moreno and M. Mostafá and M. Najafi and L. Nellen and M. U. Nisa and R. Noriega-Papaqui and L. Olivera-Nieto and N. Omodei and M. Osorio and E. Ponce and Y. Pérez Araujo and E. G. Pérez-Pérez and C. D. Rho and D. Rosa-González and M. Roth and E. Ruiz-Velasco and H. Salazar and A. Sandoval and M. Schneider and G. Schwefer and J. Serna-Franco and A. J. Smith and Y. Son and R. W. Springer and O. Tibolla and K. Tollefson and I. Torres and R. Torres-Escobedo and R. Turner and X. Wang and Z. Wang and I. J. Watson and H. Wu and S. Yu and S. Yun-Cárcamo and H. Zhou and C. de León},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.12613},
year = {2025}
}