A survey of active galaxies at TeV photon energies with the HAWC gamma-ray observatory

A. Albert, C. Alvarez, J. R. Angeles Camacho, J. C. Arteaga-Velázquez, K. P. Arunbabu, D. Avila Rojas, H. A. Ayala Solares, V. Baghmanyan, E. Belmont-Moreno, S. Y. BenZvi, C. Brisbois, K. S. Caballero-Mora, T. Capistrán, A. Carramiñana, S. Casanova, U. Cotti, J. Cotzomi, S. Coutiño de León, E. De la Fuente, B. L. Dingus, M. A. DuVernois, M. Durocher, J. C. Díaz-Vélez, K. Engel, C. Espinoza, K. L. Fan, M. Fernández Alonso, H. Fleischhack, N. Fraija, A. Galván-Gámez, D. García, J. A. García-González, F. Garfias, M. M. González, J. A. Goodman, J. P. Harding, S. Hernández, B. Hona, D. Huang, F. Hueyotl-Zahuantitla, P. Hüntemeyer, A. Iriarte, A. Jardin-Blicq, V. Joshi, D. Kieda, A. Lara, W. H. Lee, H. León Vargas, J. T. Linnemann, A. L. Longinotti, G. Luis-Raya, J. Lundeen, K. Malone, O. Martínez, I. Martinez-Castellanos, J. Martínez-Castro, J. A. Matthews, P. Miranda-Romagnoli, J. A. Morales-Soto, E. Moreno, M. Mostafá, A. Nayerhoda, L. Nellen, M. Newbold, M. U. Nisa, R. Noriega-Papaqui, L. Olivera-Nieto, A. Peisker, E. G. Pérez-Pérez, C. D. Rho, D. Rosa-González, E. Ruiz-Velasco, H. Salazar, F. Salesa Greus, A. Sandoval, M. Schneider, H. Schoorlemmer, A. J. Smith, R. W. Springer, K. Tollefson, I. Torres, R. Torres-Escobedo, F. Ureña-Mena, L. Villaseñor, T. Weisgarber, E. Willox, A. Zepeda, H. Zhou, C. de León

Published 2020-09-18Version 1

The High Altitude Water Cherenkov Gamma-Ray Observatory (HAWC) continuously detects TeV photons and particles within its large field-of-view, accumulating every day a deeper exposure of two thirds of the sky. We analyzed 1523~days of HAWC live data acquired over four and a half years, in a follow-up analysis of {138} nearby ($z<0.3$) active galactic nuclei from the {\em Fermi} 3FHL catalog culminating within $40^\circ$ of the zenith at Sierra Negra, the HAWC site. This search for persistent TeV emission used a maximum-likelihood analysis assuming intrinsic power-law spectra attenuated by pair production of gamma-ray photons with the extragalactic background light. HAWC clearly detects persistent emission from Mkn~421 and Mkn~501, the two brightest blazars in the TeV sky, at 65$\sigma$ and 17$\sigma$ level, respectively. {Weaker evidence for long-term emission is found for three other known very-high energy emitters:} the radiogalaxy M87 and the BL Lac objects VER~J0521+211 and 1ES~1215+303, the later two at $z\sim 0.1$. We find evidence for collective emission from the set of 30 previously reported very high-energy sources that excludes Mkn~421 and Mkn~501 with a random probability $\sim 10^{-5}$. Upper limits are presented for the sample under the power-law assumption and in the predefined (0.5-2.0), (2.0-8.0) and (8.0-32.0) TeV energy intervals.