THE ASTROPARTICLE PHYSICS CONFERENCE An All-Sky Simulation of the Response of HAWC to Sources of Cosmic Rays and Gamma Rays

Abstract: The High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Gamma-Ray Observatory (HAWC) is set to become one of the world’s most sensitive wide-field observatories of TeV gamma rays and cosmic rays. In anticipation of commissioning the full observatory, we have created simulated data sets which model the response of the HAWC detector to TeV particles. These data sets contain the same time dependence and statistical fluctuations as the data. They are then used to optimize the data analysis, investigate artifacts introduced by our analysis techniques, and estimate the sensitivity of HAWC. We present a simulation of cosmic rays which includes the shadow of the moon and a 10−3 anisotropy in the cosmic ray arrival directions. We also show how the simulation is used to incorporate time-dependent models of gamma-ray sources