3HWC: The Third HAWC Catalog of Very-High-Energy Gamma-ray Sources

TL;DR

This paper presents the third HAWC gamma-ray catalog, revealing 65 TeV sources with improved sensitivity, including new sources and potential counterparts, advancing our understanding of high-energy gamma-ray sky.

Contribution

The paper introduces the most sensitive HAWC catalog to date, identifying new TeV gamma-ray sources and potential associations with known astrophysical objects.

Findings

65 sources detected at ≥5 sigma significance

8 new sources without previous counterparts

14 new sources potentially linked to Fermi LAT sources

Abstract

We present a new catalog of TeV gamma-ray sources using 1523 days of data from the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory. The catalog represents the most sensitive survey of the Northern gamma-ray sky at energies above several TeV, with three times the exposure compared to the previous HAWC catalog, 2HWC. We report 65 sources detected at $\geq$ 5 sigma significance, along with the positions and spectral fits for each source. The catalog contains eight sources that have no counterpart in the 2HWC catalog, but are within $1^\circ$ of previously detected TeV emitters, and twenty sources that are more than $1^\circ$ away from any previously detected TeV source. Of these twenty new sources, fourteen have a potential counterpart in the fourth \textit{Fermi} Large Area Telescope catalog of gamma-ray sources. We also explore potential associations of 3HWC sources with pulsars in the ATNF pulsar catalog and supernova remnants in the Galactic supernova remnant catalog.