The High Altitude Water Cherenlov (HAWC) Gamma ray Detector Response to Atmospheric Electric Field Variations

Abstract:

The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory is located at
4100 m a.s.l. in Mexico. HAWC’s primary purpose is the study of both: galactic and extra-galactic sources of high energy gamma rays. HAWC consists of 300 large water Cherenkov detectors (WCD), each instrumented with 4 photo-multipliers (PMTs).
The HAWC scaler system records the rates of individual PMTs giving the opportunity of study relatively low energy transients as solar energetic particles, the solar modulation of galactic cosmic rays and possible variations of the cosmic ray rate due to atmospheric electric field changes. In this work, we present the observations of scaler rate enhancements associated with thunderstorm activity observed at the HAWC site.
In particular, we present preliminary results of the analysis of the time coincidence of the electric field changes and the scaler enhancements.