Search for neutrino flares from point sources with IceCube
J. L. Bazo Alba, E. Bernardini, R. Lauer
备注：
4 pages, 5 figures, Proceedings of the 31st ICRC, Lodz, Poland, July 2009. This version includes the results presented at the conference and supersedes the version previously submitted to the conference
A time-dependent search for neutrino flares from pre-defined directions in the whole sky is presented. The analysis uses a time clustering algorithm combined with an unbinned likelihood method. This algorithm provides a search for significant neutrino flares over time-scales that are not fixed a-priori and that are not triggered by multiwavelength observations. The event selection is optimized to maximize the discovery potential, taking into account different time-scales of source activity and background rates. The method is applied to a pre-defined list of bright and variable astrophysical sources using 22-string IceCube data. No significant excess is found.
The largest Solar flare have been recorded in gamma flash and hard spectra up to tens GeV energy. The present building and upgrade of Hyper-Kamiokande (HK) and IceCube (as well as Deep Core, PINGU) neutrino detectors do offer a novel way to largest trace of solar Flare: their sudden anti-neutrino (or neutrino) flare made by proton scattering and pion decays via Delta resonance production. These signals might be observable at largest flare by HK via soft spectra up to tens- hundred MeV energy and by IceCube-PINGU at higher, GeV up to hundred GeV, energies. We show the expected rate of signals f…
Recently the IceCube collaboration and 15 other collaborations reported the spatial and temporal coincidence between the neutrino event IceCube-170922A and the radio-TeV activity of the blazar TXS 0506+056. Their further analysis on 9.5 years of IceCube data discovered neutrino flare between September 2014 and March 2015, when TXS 0506+056 is however in "quiescent" state. We analyze the Fermi-LAT data in that direction, and find another bright GeV source PKS 0502+049, which is at an angle of $1.2^{\circ}$ from TXS 0506+056, with strong activties during the neutrino flare. No other bright GeV s…
Since the end of the eighties and in response to a reported increase in the total neutrino flux in the Homestake experiment in coincidence with a solar flare, solar neutrino detectors have searched for solar flare signals. Neutrinos from the decay of mesons, which are themselves produced in collisions of accelerated protons with the solar atmosphere, would provide a novel window on the underlying physics of the acceleration process. For our studies we focus on the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a cubic kilometer neutrino detector located at the geographical South Pole. Due to its Supernova data…
Recent results from IceCube regarding TXS 0506+056 suggest the presence of neutrino flares that are not temporally coincident with a significant corresponding gamma ray flare. Such flares are particularly difficult to identify, as their presence must be inferred from the temporal distribution of neutrino data alone. Here we present the results of using a novel method to search for all such flares across the entire neutrino sky in 10 years of IceCube data, using both Gaussian and box-shaped flare hypotheses. Unlike for past searches, that looked for only the most significant neutrino flare in t…
Blazars are prime candidate sources for the high energy neutrinos recently detected by IceCube. Being one of the brightest sources in the extragalactic X-ray and $γ$-ray sky as well as one of the nearest blazars to Earth, Mrk 421 is an excellent source for testing the scenario of the blazar-neutrino connection. Here, we model the spectral energy distribution of Mrk 421 during a 13-day flare in 2010 with unprecedented multi-wavelength coverage, and calculate the respective neutrino flux. We find a correlation between the $>1$ PeV neutrino and photon fluxes, in all energy bands. Using typical Ic…
Blazars are among the most powerful steady sources in the Universe. Multi-messenger searches for blazars have traditionally focused on their gamma-ray emission, which can be produced simultaneously with neutrinos in photohadronic interactions. However, X-ray data can be equally vital to constrain the SED of these sources, since the hadronically co-produced gamma-rays could get absorbed by the ambient photon fields and cascade down to X-ray energies before escaping. In this work, we present the outline for an untriggered, time-dependent analysis of neutrino flares from the direction of X-ray se…
Dozens of high-energy neutrinos have been detected by the IceCube neutrino telescope, but no clear association with any classes of astrophysical sources has been identified so far. Recently, Kadler et al. (2016) report that a PeV cascade-like neutrino event occurs in positional and temporal coincidence with a giant gamma-ray flare of the blazar PKS B1424-418. Since IceCube track-like events have much better angular resolution, we here search for possible short-term gamma-ray flares that are associated with the IceCube track-like events with Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) observations. Among …
IceCube is a cubic-kilometer scale neutrino detector instrumenting a gigaton of ice at the geographic South Pole in Antarctica. On average, 8 track-like high-energy neutrino events with a high probability of being astrophysical are detected and published as alerts per year. The bright appearance of these events in the detector allow a precise pointing to their origins. This work presents a search for cosmic neutrino sources. The analysis uses high statistics archival IceCube neutrino-induced through-going muon samples to search for these sources in the vicinity of the incoming directions of th…
Although IceCube has discovered a diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux, the underlying sources of these neutrinos remain unknown. Transient astrophysical objects, such as fast radio bursts (FRBs), could explain a large percentage of the measured flux. We present the analysis techniques of IceCube searches for MeV to TeV neutrinos from FRBs. As no significant correlation between IceCube neutrinos and FRBs has been found, we present the first limit on MeV neutrino emission from FRBs and the most constraining limits for neutrinos with GeV to TeV energies. We also describe the prospects for future …
The IceCube detector is an all-flavor neutrino telescope. For several years IceCube has been detecting muon tracks from charged-current muon neutrino interactions in ice. However, IceCube has yet to observe the electromagnetic or hadronic particle showers or "cascades" initiated by charged or neutral-current neutrino interactions. The first detection of such an event signature will likely come from the known flux of atmospheric electron and muon neutrinos. A search for atmospheric neutrino-induced cascades was performed using a full year of IceCube data. Reconstruction and background rejection…
The IceCube neutrino telescope has observed for the first time a diffuse flux of high energy neutrinos, with a possible astrophysical origin. Up to now there are no evidence of sources and many hypothesis are still plausible in order to explain the measured flux. In this proceeding we analyze an alternative way to interpret the IceCube neutrinos, in terms of sum of contributions from different sources.
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is the world's largest neutrino detector, instrumenting a cubic kilometer of ice at the geographic South Pole. The detector probes neutrino energies from GeV to PeV, and collects high statistics neutrino samples by virtue of its extremely large volume. IceCube was designed to detect high-energy neutrinos from potential cosmic ray acceleration sites such as active galactic nuclei, gamma ray bursts and supernova remnants. IceCube announced the detection of a diffuse flux of astrophysical neutrinos in 2013, including the highest energy neutrinos ever detected. Ice…
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, located at the geographic South Pole, is a Cherenkov detector that continuously monitors a cubic kilometer of instrumented glacial ice for neutrino interactions in the sub-TeV to EeV energy range. Its primary design goal is the study of powerful astrophysical objects that could act as natural particle accelerators and thus as sources of (ultra) high energy cosmic rays - in short: to do neutrino astronomy. IceCube has discovered a diffuse flux of high energy astrophysical neutrinos consistent with an extra-galactic origin. In addition the IceCube Collaboration …
The IceCube DeepCore is a dense infill array of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole. While IceCube is best suited for detecting neutrinos with energies of several 100 GeV and above, DeepCore allows to probe neutrinos with lower energies. We focus on a sample of neutrinos with energies above approximately 10 GeV, which was originally optimised for oscillation experiments. Recently, it has been adapted to enable searches for transient sources of astrophysical neutrinos in the sky. In particular, this low-energy dataset can be used to conduct follow-up searches of gravitational wav…
IceCube is the first representative of the km^3 class of neutrino telescopes and currently the most sensitive detector to high-energy neutrinos. Its main mission is to search for Galactic and extragalactic sources of high-energy neutrinos, but it is also an excellent detector for the investigation of a variety of other highly topical astrophysics and particle physics topics like supernovae, dark matter and neutrino oscillations. After an introduction to neutrino astronomy and neutrino telescopes, this article presents a selection of latest results from the IceCube neutrino detector with respec…
We analyze the high-energy neutrino events observed by IceCube, aiming to probe the initial flavor of cosmic neutrinos. We study the track-to-shower ratio of the subset with energy above 60 TeV, where the signal is expected to dominate and show that different production mechanisms give rise to different predictions even accounting for the uncertainties due to neutrino oscillations. We include for the first time the passing muons observed by IceCube in the analysis. They corroborate the hypotheses that cosmic neutrinos have been seen and their flavor matches expectations.
We present a search based on a time dependent neutrino flux prediction from the X-ray binary LS I +61 303. Results from data taken with the 22 and 40 strings of IceCube are compatible with background fluctuations.
IceCube measures the diffuse neutrino flux across several neutrino flavors and energy ranges. ESTES focuses on the measurement of the diffuse neutrino flux using high purity astrophysical muon neutrinos with energies above 1 TeV. We use the Enhanced Starting Track Event Selection dataset which selects for tracks starting within the IceCube fiducial volume. We employ a machine learning algorithm to help differentiate between tracks from atmospheric and astrophysical neutrinos. This produces a high purity diffuse neutrino sample that can provide valuable insight into the properties of the atmosp…
IceCube, a cubic-kilometer sized neutrino detector at the Geographic South Pole, has recently discovered a diffuse all-flavor flux of astrophysical neutrinos. However, the corresponding astrophysical sources have not yet been identified in current IceCube analyses. We present a method to interpret the results of a recently published angular correlation analysis in IceCube searching for spatial clustering of muon neutrino events in terms of astrophysical models (given by an arbitrary source count distribution). We exemplarily show the resulting limits on the parameters of a class of source coun…
The association of two IceCube detections, the IceCube-170922A event and a neutrino flare, with the blazar TXS0506+056, has paved the way for the multimessenger quest for cosmic accelerators. IceCube has observed many other neutrinos but their origin remains unknown. To better understand the reason for the apparent lack of neutrino counterparts we have extended the comprehensive dissection of the sky area performed for the IceCube-170922A event to all the 70 public IceCube high-energy neutrinos that are well reconstructed and off the Galactic plane. Using the multi-frequency data available thr…
Located at the South Pole, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory is the world largest neutrino telescope, instrumenting one cubic kilometre of Antarctic ice at a depth between 1450m to 2450m. In 2013 IceCube reported the first observations of a diffuse astrophysical high-energy neutrino flux. Although the IceCube Collaboration has identified more than 100 high-energy neutrino events, the origin of this neutrino flux is still not known. Blazars, a subclass of Active Galactic Nuclei and one of the most powerful classes of objects in the Universe, have long been considered promising sources of high en…
In 2013, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory located at the geographic South Pole detected evidence for a diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux above ~60 TeV. To this day, IceCube has operated with full detector configuration for more than 6 years. The observed astrophysical neutrino flux has been confirmed with > 6$σ$ significance with both events starting within the detector (all flavor) and events traversing through the Earth ($ν_μ$ charged-current). Somewhat equal flavor ratio of astrophysical neutrinos is expected at Earth assuming standard thorough oscillation. A search for tau neutrinos has …
In this review I discuss the ultra-high energy neutrinos (UHEN) originated from Cosmic-Rays propogation (GZK neutrinos) and from Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs), and discuss their detectability in kilometers scale detectors like ARA and IceCube. While GZK neutrinos are expected from cosmic ray interactions on the CMB, the GRB neutrinos depend on the physics inside the sources. GRBs are predicted to emit UHEN in the prompt and in the later 'after-glow' phase. I discuss the constraints on the hadronic component of GRBs derived from the search of four years of IceCube data for a prompt neutrino fux from …
Jet heating via nuclear collisions may be the main mechanism for gamma-ray burst (GRB) emission. Besides producing the observed gamma-rays, collisional heating must generate 10-100 GeV neutrinos, implying a close relation between the neutrino and gamma-ray luminosities. We exploit this theoretical relation to make predictions for possible GRB detections by IceCube+DeepCore. To estimate the expected neutrino signal, we use the largest sample of bursts observed by BATSE in 1991-2000. A GRB neutrino could have been detected if IceCube+DeepCore operated at that time. Detection of 10-100 GeV neutri…
The standard neutrino oscillation paradigm predicts almost equal fractions of astrophysical neutrino flavors at Earth regardless of their production ratio at the sources. Therefore, identification of astrophysical tau neutrinos could not only reconfirm the astrophysical neutrino flux measured by IceCube, but also is essential in precisely determining the astrophysical neutrino flavor ratio at Earth, which is an important probe for physics beyond the Standard Model over astronomical baselines. A tau neutrino undergoing a charged current (CC) interaction in IceCube could produce a double deposit…
The observed dark matter abundance in the Universe can be explained with non-thermal, heavy dark matter models. In order for dark matter to still be present today, its lifetime has to far exceed the age of the Universe. In these scenarios, dark matter decay can produce highly energetic neutrinos, along with other Standard Model particles. To date, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory is the world's largest neutrino telescope, located at the geographic South Pole. In 2013, the IceCube collaboration reported the first observation of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos. Since then, IceCube has collec…
IceCube is a km^3 scale neutrino detector being constructed deep in the Antarctic ice. When complete, IceCube will consist of 4800 optical modules deployed on 80 strings between 1450 and 2450 m of depth. During the 2007-2008 data taking season, 22 strings were operational. This configuration is already much larger than previous neutrino telescopes and provides better sensitivity to point sources of high energy (>1 TeV) neutrino emission. Such astrophysical objects are leading candidates for the acceleration of cosmic rays. We describe the IceCube detector and present the methods and results of…
IceCube has reported the detection of a diffuse TeV-PeV neutrino emission, for which the flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) have been proposed to be the candidate sources. Here we assume that the neutrino flux from FSRQs is proportional to their gamma-ray ones, and obtain the gamma-ray/neutrino flux ratio by the diffuse gamma-ray flux from Fermi-LAT measurement of FSRQs and the diffuse neutrino flux detected by IceCube. We apply this ratio to individual FSRQs and hence predict their neutrino flux. We find that a large fraction of candidate FSRQs from the northern sky in the IceCube point sour…
The completed IceCube Observatory, the first km^3 neutrino telescope, is already providing the most stringent limits on the flux of high energy cosmic neutrinos from point-like and diffuse galactic and extra-galactic sources. The non-detection of extra-terrestrial neutrinos has important consequences on the origin of the cosmic rays. Here the current status of astrophysical neutrino searches, and of the observation of a persistent cosmic ray anisotropy above 100 TeV, are reviewed.
We summarize initial results for high-energy neutrino counterpart searches coinciding with gravitational-wave events in LIGO/Virgo's GWTC-2 catalog using IceCube's neutrino triggers. We did not find any statistically significant high-energy neutrino counterpart and derived upper limits on the time-integrated neutrino emission on Earth as well as the isotropic equivalent energy emitted in high-energy neutrinos for each event.
Instrumenting a gigaton of ice at the geographic South Pole, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory has been at the forefront of groundbreaking scientific discoveries over the past decade. These include the observation of a flux of TeV-PeV astrophysical neutrinos, detection of the first astrophysical neutrino on the Glashow resonance and evidence of the blazar TXS 0506+056 as the first known astronomical source of high-energy neutrinos. Several questions, however, remain, pertaining to the precise origins of astrophysical neutrinos, their production mechanisms at the source and in Earth's atmosphere…
The nearly isotropic distribution of the TeV-PeV neutrinos recently detected by IceCube suggests that they come from sources at distance beyond our Galaxy, but how far they are is largely unknown due to lack of any associations with known sources. In this paper, we propose that the cumulative TeV gamma-ray emission accompanying the production of neutrinos can be used to constrain the distance of these neutrino sources, since the opacity of TeV gamma rays due to absorption by the extragalactic background light (EBL) depends on the distance that these TeV gamma rays have travelled. As the diffus…
Galactic cosmic rays reach energies of at least several PeV, and their interactions should generate $γ$-rays and neutrinos from decay of secondary pions. Therefore, Galactic sources have a guaranteed contribution to the total high-energy cosmic neutrino flux observed by IceCube. Assuming that the highest energy $γ$-rays are pionic, promising neutrino source candidates have been identified based on their spectra, and observing them is likely over the lifetime of the IceCube experiment. Here, we present the search for Galactic sources of high-energy cosmic neutrinos by focusing on sources identi…
Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs), if accelerated in the gamma-ray burst (GRB) blastwave, are expected to produce PeV-EeV neutrinos by interacting with long-lived GRB afterglow photons. Detailed spectral and temporal properties of the flux of these neutrinos depend on the GRB blastwave evolution scenario, but can last for days to years time scale in contrast to the seconds to minutes time scale for "burst" neutrino flux contemporaneous with the prompt gamma-ray emission and which has been constrained by IceCube in the $\sim$ 50 TeV-2 PeV range. We compute expected neutrino events in IceCub…
IceCube is a cubic kilometer neutrino detector array in the Antarctic ice that was designed to search for astrophysical, high-energy neutrinos. It has detected a diffuse flux of astrophysical neutrinos that appears to be of extragalactic origin. A possible contribution to this diffuse flux could stem from core-collapse supernovae. The high-energy neutrinos could either come from the interaction of the ejecta with a dense circumstellar medium or a jet, emanating from the star's core, that stalls in the star's envelope. Here, we will present results of a stacking analysis to search for this high…
The Telescope Array (TA) has observed a statistically significant excess in cosmic-rays with energies above 57 EeV in a region of approximately 1150 square degrees centered on coordinates (R.A. = 146.7, Dec. = 43.2). We note that the location of this excess correlates with two of the 28 extraterrestrial neutrinos recently observed by IceCube. The overlap between the two IceCube neutrinos and the TA excess is statistically significant at the 2$σ$ level. Furthermore, the spectrum and intensity of the IceCube neutrinos is consistent with a single source which would also produce the TA excess. Fin…
Powerful jets and outflows generated in tidal disruption events (TDEs) around supermassive black holes have been suggested to be possible sites producing high-energy neutrinos, but it is unclear whether such environment can provide the bulk of the neutrinos detected by the IceCube Observatory. In this work, by considering realistic limits on the non-thermal emission power of a TDE jet and the birth rate of the TDEs with jets pointing towards us, we show that it is hard to use the jetted TDE population to explain the flux and the isotropic arrival directions of the observed TeV-PeV neutrinos. T…
IceCube detects neutrinos at energies orders of magnitude higher than any neutrinos produced at particle accelerators. Neutrinos are weakly interacting particles but at energies above 30 TeV the Earth becomes opaque to neutrinos. The neutrino cross section is well predicted in the Standard Model. Any unexpected increase in the cross-section could be a sign of beyond the standard model physics. In this analysis IceCube's through-going muon neutrino flux is used to fit for the cross section of neutrino interaction, the through-going high energy neutrinos will be absorbed as they travel through t…
Blazars constitute the vast majority of extragalactic $γ$-ray sources. They can also contribute a sizable fraction of the diffuse astrophysical neutrinos detected by IceCube. In the past few years, the real-time alert system of IceCube has led to multiwavelength follow-up of very high-energy neutrino events of plausible astrophysical origin. Spatial and temporal coincidences of these neutrino events with the high-activity state of $γ$-ray blazars can provide a unique opportunity to decipher cosmic-ray interactions in the relativistic jets. Assuming that blazars accelerate cosmic rays up to ult…
We use IceCube's high-statistics, neutrino-induced, through-going muon samples to search for astrophysical neutrino sources. Specifically, we analyze the arrival directions of IceCube's highest energy neutrinos. These high-energy events allow for a good angular reconstruction of their origin. Additionally, they have a high probability to come from an astrophysical source. On average, 8 neutrino events that satisfy these selection criteria are detected per year. Using these neutrino events as a source catalog, we present a search for the production sites of cosmic neutrinos. In this contributio…
The mystery of where and how Nature accelerates the cosmic rays is still unresolved a century after their discovery. Gamma ray bursts (GRBs) have been proposed as one of the more plausible sources of extragalactic cosmic rays. A positive observation of neutrinos in coincidence with a GRB would identify these objects as sources of the highest-energy cosmic rays and provide invaluable information about the processes occurring inside these phenomena. Calculations show that a kilometer-scale neutrino telescope is necessary for this task. The idea of such a detector is now becoming reality as IceCu…
The recent IceCube discovery of 0.1-1 PeV neutrinos of astrophysical origin opens up a new era for high-energy astrophysics. Although there are various astrophysical candidate sources, a firm association of the detected neutrinos with one (or more) of them is still lacking. A recent analysis of plausible astrophysical counterparts within the error circles of IceCube events showed that likely counterparts for nine of the IceCube neutrinos include mostly BL Lacs, among which Mrk 421. Motivated by this result and a previous independent analysis on the neutrino emission from Mrk 421, we test the B…
The evaluation of mass composition of cosmic rays in the knee region ($\sim 3$ PeV) is critical to understanding the transition in the origin of cosmic rays from galactic to extragalactic sources. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole is a multi-component detector consisting of the surface IceTop array and the deep in-ice IceCube detector. By applying modern machine-learning techniques to cosmic-ray air showers reconstructed coincidentally in both detector components of IceCube observatory, the energy and the mass of primary cosmic rays in this transition region can be measured. I…
We present a search in IceCube data for neutrino emission from Galactic TeV gamma-ray sources detected by the HAWC gamma-ray observatory. HAWC serves as the excellent instrument to complement IceCube with its energy range extending to very high energies. Assuming that the highest energy photons originate from the decay of pions, rather than from accelerated leptons, the very high energy gamma-rays observed by HAWC are expected to be correlated with neutrinos. Using eight years of IceCube data, we report on two analyses that investigate a possible neutrino--gamma ray correlation. The first is a…
The detection of an astrophysical flux of high-energy neutrinos by IceCube is a major step forward in the search for the origin of cosmic rays, as this emission is expected to originate in hadronic interactions taking place in or near cosmic-ray accelerators. No neutrino point sources, or a significant correlation with known astrophysical objects, have been identified in the IceCube data so far that could reveal the location of the neutrino emission sites. The hadronic interactions responsible for the neutrino emission should also lead to the production of high-energy gamma rays from neutral p…
While gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) were once believed to be a dominant source of astrophysical neutrinos, the lack of any significant correlation between high-energy photons and neutrinos has resulted in stringent limits on their neutrino fluxes. Previous IceCube searches for neutrinos from GRBs have generally focused on the prompt phase of GRBs. However, the higher density during the GRB precursor stage could lead to more hadronic interactions, and therefore be the predominant time of neutrino emission. We present results from an analysis of Fermi-GBM data to identify and characterize individual p…
