A SEARCH FOR TEV GAMMA-RAY BURSTS ON A 1-SECOND TIME-SCALE

Although atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes have restricted fields of vi ew, their fluence sensitivity warrants a search for gamma-ray burst ph enomena. A search for 400 GeV gamma-ray bursts on a 1 s time-scale usi ng archival data taken between 1988 and 1992 with the Whipple Collabor ation 10 m reflector is presented. No evidence of such bursts is found . Bursts of TeV gamma rays have been predicted from exotic astrophysic al objects such as Primordial Black Holes and Cosmic Strings. An upper limit to the number density of exploding PBH of 3.0 +/- 1.0 x 10(6) p c(-3) yr(-1) is calculated. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.