Gamma Ray Astronomy with Underground Detectors

Abstract

Underground detectors measure the directions of up-coming muons of neutrino origin. They can also observe down-going muons made by gamma rays in the Earth's atmosphere. Although gamma ray showers are muon-poor, they produce a sufficient number of muons to detect the sources observed by GeV and TeV telescopes. With a threshold higher by one hundred and a probability of muon production of about $1\%$ for the shallower AMANDA and Lake Baikal detectors, these instruments can, for a typical GRO source, match the detection efficiency of a GeV satellite detector since their effective area is larger by a factor $10^4$. The muons must have enough energy for accurate reconstruction of their direction. Very energetic muons on the other hand are rare because they are only produced by higher energy gamma rays whose flux is suppressed by the decreasing flux at the source and by absorption on interstellar light. We show that there is a window of opportunity for muon astronomy in the 100~GeV energy region which nicely matches the threshold energies of the AMANDA and Lake Baikal detectors.