Gamma/Hadron Separation with the HAWC Observatory
Creators: name: Alfaro, R.
name: Alvarez, C.
name: Álvarez, J. D.
name: Camacho, J. R. Angeles
name: Arteaga-Velázquez, J. C.
name: Rojas, D. Avila
name: Solares, H. A. Ayala
name: Babu, R.
name: Belmont-Moreno, E.
name: Brisbois, C.
name: Caballero-Mora, K. S.
name: Capistrán, T.
name: Carramiñana, A.
name: Casanova, S.
name: Chaparro-Amaro, O.
name: Cotti, U.
name: Cotzomi, J.
name: de León, S. Coutiño
name: De la Fuente, E.
name: de León, C.
name: Hernandez, R. Diaz
name: Dingus, B. L.
name: DuVernois, M. A.
name: Durocher, M.
name: Díaz-Vélez, J. C.
name: Ellsworth, R. W.
name: Engel, K.
name: Espinoza, C.
name: Fan, K. L.
name: Alonso, M. Fernández
name: Fraija, N.
name: Garcia, D.
name: García-González, J. A.
name: Garfias, F.
name: González, M. M.
name: Goodman, J. A.
name: Harding, J. P.
name: Hernandez, S.
name: Hona, B.
name: Huang, D.
name: Hueyotl-Zahuantitla, F.
name: Hüntemeyer, P.
name: Iriarte, A.
name: Jardin-Blicq, A.
name: Joshi, V.
name: Kaufmann, S.
name: Lara, G. J. Kundem A.
name: Lee, W. H.
name: Lee, J.
name: Vargas, H. León
name: Linnemann, J. T.
name: Luis-Raya, G.
name: Lundeen, J.
name: Malone, K.
name: Marandon, V.
name: Martinez, O.
name: Martínez-Castro, J.
name: Matthews, J. A.
name: Miranda-Romagnoli, P.
name: Morales-Soto, J. A.
name: Nayerhoda, A.
name: Nellen, L.
name: Nisa, M. U.
name: Noriega-Papaqui, R.
name: Olivera-Nieto, L.
name: Omodei, N.
name: Peisker, A.
name: Araujo, Y. Pérez
name: Pérez-Pérez, E. G.
name: Rho, C. D.
name: Rosa-González, D.
name: Ruiz-Velasco, E.
name: Salazar, H.
name: Greus, F. Salesa
name: Sandoval, A.
name: Parkinson, P. M. Saz
name: Serna-Franco, J.
name: Smith, A. J.
name: Springer, R. W.
name: Tibolla, O.
name: Tollefson, K.
name: Torres, I.
name: Torres-Escobedo, R.
name: Turner, R.
name: Ureña-Mena, F.
name: Villaseñor, L.
name: Wang, X.
name: Watson, I. J.
name: Werner, F.
name: Willox, E.
name: Wood, J.
name: Zepeda, A.
name: Zhou, H.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
subject: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
subject: High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex)
subject: Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) gamma-ray observatory observes atmospheric showers produced by incident gamma rays and cosmic rays with energy from 300 GeV to more than 100 TeV. A crucial phase in analyzing gamma-ray sources using ground-based gamma-ray detectors like HAWC is to identify the showers produced by gamma rays or hadrons. The HAWC observatory records roughly 25,000 events per second, with hadrons representing the vast majority ($&gt;99.9\%$) of these events. The standard gamma/hadron separation technique in HAWC uses a simple rectangular cut involving only two parameters. This work describes the implementation of more sophisticated gamma/hadron separation techniques, via machine learning methods (boosted decision trees and neural networks), and summarizes the resulting improvements in gamma/hadron separation obtained in HAWC.
description: 35 pages, 9 figures, published in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A