Discovery and Multi-Wavelength Studies of New Hard Gamma-Ray Sources Using Fermi-LAT Data

Very High Energy (VHE) gamma-ray emissions have become increasingly important in multi-messenger astronomy due to their ability to reveal information about other high energy processes such as neutrino and cosmic ray production and the nature of the isotropic gamma-ray background. The goal of this project is to search for new sources of these VHE emissions using data collected over the past 13 years with the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) and search for X-ray counterparts, in particular using the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. The LAT photon data was isolated to energies above 50 GeV to search for spatial clusters, which were compared with two Fermi catalogues, the Third Catalog of Hard Fermi-LAT Sources (3FHL) and the Fourth Fermi Large Area Telescope Catalog (4FGL), to reveal new sources of VHE gamma rays and study their multi-wavelength emission. Through this work, we will be able to generate models that will help us gain insight into the types of environments in which these VHE gamma rays were created and their connection to diffuse high-energy backgrounds.