Three-quarters of the 1 cubic kilometer neutrino telescope IceCube is currently taking data. Current models predict high-energy neutrino emission from transient objects like supernovae (SNe) and gammaray bursts (GRBs). To increase the sensitivity to such transient objects we have set up an optical follow-up program that triggers optical observations on multiplets of high-energy muon-neutrinos. We define multiplets as a minimum of two muon-neutrinos from the same direction (within 4 deg) that arrive within a 100 s time window. When this happens, an alert is issued to the four ROTSE-III telescopes, which immediately observe the corresponding region in the sky. Image subtraction is applied to the optical data to find transient objects. In addition, neutrino multiplets are investigated online for temporal and directional coincidence with gamma-ray satellite observations issued over the Gamma-Ray Burst Coordinate Network. An overview of the full program is given, from the online selection of neutrino events to the automated follow-up, and the resulting sensitivity to transient neutrino sources is presented for the first time.
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 discoveries of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos by IceCube in 2013 and of gravitational waves by LIGO in 2015 have enabled a new era of multi-messenger astronomy. Gravitational waves can identify the merging of compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes. These compact mergers, especially neutron star mergers, are potential neutrino sources. We present an analysis searching for neutrinos from gravitational wave sources reported by the LIGO Virgo Collaboration (LVC). We use a dedicated transient likelihood analysis combining IceCube events with source localizations provided by …
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole can provide unique tests of muon production models in extensive air showers by measuring both the low-energy (GeV) and high-energy (TeV) muon components. We present here a measurement of the TeV muon content in near-vertical air showers detected with IceTop in coincidence with IceCube. The primary cosmic-ray energy is estimated from the dominant electromagnetic component of the air shower observed at the surface. The high-energy muon content of the shower is studied based on the energy losses measured in the deep detector. Using a neural netwo…
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…
Recent IceCube results suggest that the first detection of very high energy astrophysical neutrinos have been accomplished. We consider these results at face value in a Galactic origin context. Emission scenarios from both the Fermi bubble and broader halo region are considered. We motivate that such an intensity of diffuse neutrino emission could be Galactic in origin if it is produced from an outflow into the halo region. This scenario requires cosmic ray transport within the outflow environment to be different to that inferred locally within the disk and that activity in the central part of…
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…
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 has discovered an unresolved and isotropic flux of neutrinos between 10 TeV and 8 PeV. Extragalactic origin for this flux is usually assumed, as well as a correlation with the sources of cosmic rays. To date, no clear association with a class of objects has been made. HAWC is a very-high-energy (VHE, or $\gtrsim$100 GeV) gamma ray observatory in operation in central Mexico. HAWC has studied 2/3 of the entire sky ($\sim8~sr)$. We use this survey to search for optically thin sources of cosmic rays and neutrinos, responsible for IceCube's observations. We have written a simulation of the …
The advent of Multi-Messenger Astronomy has allowed for new types of source searches within the neutrino community. We present the results of the first search for GeV astrophysical neutrinos emitted from Compact Binary Mergers, i.e. binary black hole or binary neutron star mergers, detected by the LIGO and Virgo interferometers. We introduce a new approach that lowers the energy threshold of IceCube from roughly 10 GeV to <1 GeV. This method uses an innovative event selection of GeV neutrino events in IceCube and searches for a statistically significant increase in the amount of GeV-like event…
The recent association between IC-170922A and the blazar TXS0506+056 highlights the importance of real-time observations for identifying possible astrophysical neutrino sources. Thanks to its near-100\% duty cycle, 4$π$ steradian field of view, and excellent sensitivity over many decades of energy, IceCube is well suited both to generate alerts for follow-up by other instruments and to rapidly follow up alerts generated by other instruments. Detection of neutrinos in coincidence with transient astrophysical phenomena serves as a smoking gun for hadronic processes and supplies essential informa…
Electron anti-neutrinos at the Glashow resonance (GR, at $E_{\bar ν_e} \sim 6.3$ PeV) have an enhanced probability to be detected. With three neutrinos detected by IceCube in the (1-2) PeV energy range at present, one would expect that about 1 to 4 GR $\barν_e$ should have been detected. The high-energy $\sim 8.7$ PeV muon neutrino detected by IceCube may not be a GR event. If so, we expect to detect 50 to 70 GR $\barν_e$, then one would have a "missing Glashow-resonance problem". This would suggest (1) that $pγ$ interaction rather than $pp$ interaction is the dominant channel to produce the o…
The IceCube (IC) collaboration recently reported the detection of TeV-PeV extraterrestrial neutrinos whose origin is yet unknown. By the photon-neutrino connection in $pp$ and $pγ$ interactions, we use the \fermi-LAT observations to constrain the origin of the IC detected neutrinos. We find that Galactic origins, i.e., the diffuse Galactic neutrinos due to cosmic ray (CR) propagation in the Milky Way, and the neutrinos from the Galactic point sources, may not produce the IC neutrino flux, thus these neutrinos should be of extragalactic origin. Moreover, the extragalactic gamma-ray bursts (GRBs…
Between 2011 March and 2014 August Swift responded to 20 triggers from the IceCube neutrino observatory, observing the IceCube 50% confidence error circle in X-rays, typically within 5 hours of the trigger. No confirmed counterpart has been detected. We describe the Swift follow up strategy and data analysis and present the results of the campaign. We discuss the challenges of distinguishing the X-ray counterpart to a neutrino trigger from serendipitous uncatalogued X-ray sources in the error circle, and consider the implications of our results for future strategies for multi-messenger astrono…
Realtime analyses are necessary to identify the source of high energy neutrinos. As an observatory with a 4$π$ steradian field of view and near-100% duty cycle, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a unique facility for investigating transients. In 2016, IceCube established a pipeline that uses low-latency data to rapidly respond to astrophysical events that were of interest to the multi-messenger observational community. Here, we describe this pipeline and summarize the results from all of the analyses performed since 2016. We focus not only on those analyses which were performed in response t…
Search for gravitational waves associated with high-energy neutrinos detected by IceCube during the third observing run of LIGO-Virgo
Universiteit Gent（根特大学）；STAR Institute, Université de Liège（列日大学STAR研究所）；Johns Hopkins University（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学）；University of Catania（卡塔尼亚大学）；Cardiff University（卡迪夫大学）
Searches for spatial associations between high-energy neutrinos observed at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and known astronomical objects may hold the key to establishing the neutrinos' origins and the origins of hadronic cosmic rays. While extragalactic sources like the blazar TXS 0506+056 merit significant attention, Galactic sources may also represent part of the puzzle. Here, we explore whether open clusters and supernova remnants in the Milky Way contribute measurably to the IceCube track-like neutrino events above 200 TeV. By searching for positional coincidences with catalogs of known…
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…
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…
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…
IceCube is a cubic-kilometer Cherenkov detector installed in deep ice at the geographic South Pole. IceCube's surface array, IceTop, measures the electromagnetic signal and mainly low-energy muons from extensive air showers above several 100 TeV primary energy, with shower bundles and high-energy muons detected by the in-ice detector IceCube. In combination, the in-ice detector and IceTop provide unique opportunities to study cosmic rays in detail with large statistics. This contribution summarizes recent results from these studies. In addition, the IceCube-Upgrade will include a considerable …
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 IceCube neutrino event detected 360 s before the trigger of LIGO/Virgo S190728q is unlikely to be physically associated with the GW event because of an energy budget reason.
We report on the search for optical counterparts to IceCube neutrino alerts released between April 2016 and August 2021 with the All-Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN). Despite the discovery of a diffuse astrophysical high-energy neutrino flux in 2013, the source of those neutrinos remains largely unknown. Since 2016, IceCube has published likely-astrophysical neutrinos as public realtime alerts. Through a combination of normal survey and triggered target-of-opportunity observations, ASAS-SN obtained images within 1 hour of the neutrino detection for 20% (11) of all observable IceCu…
The uncertainty region of the highly energetic neutrino IceCube200107A includes 3HSP J095507.9+355101 ($z$~=~0.557), an extreme blazar, which was detected in a high, very hard, and variable X-ray state shortly after the neutrino arrival. Following a detailed multi-wavelength investigation, we confirm that the source is a genuine BL Lac, contrary to TXS 0506+056, the first source so far associated with IceCube neutrinos, which is a "masquerading" BL Lac. As in the case of TXS0506+056, 3HSP J095507.9+355101 is also way off the so-called "blazar sequence". We consider 3HSP J095507.9+355101 a poss…
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…
Identifying the most likely sources for high-energy neutrino emission has been one of the main topics in high-energy astrophysics ever since the first observation of high-energy neutrinos by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. Active galactic nuclei with relativistic jets, also known as blazars, have been considered to be one of the main candidates because of their ability to accelerate particles to high energies. We study the connection between radio emission and IceCube neutrino events using data from the Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO) and Metsähovi Radio Observatory blazar monitoring p…
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…
Recently IceCube collaboration has reported first evidence for the astrophysical neutrinos. Observation corresponds to the total astrophysical neutrino flux of the order of $3 \cdot 10^{-8}$ $GeV/cm^2/s/sr$ in a PeV energy range. Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are natural candidate sources for such neutrinos. To model the neutrino creation in AGNs we study photopion production processes on the radiation field of the Shakura-Sunyaev accretion disks in the black hole vicinity. We show that this model can explain detected neutrino flux and avoids, at the same time, existing constraints from the gam…
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 origin of the high-energy flux of neutrinos detected by IceCube is still unknown. Recent works report the evidence for a possible positional correlation between the reconstructed neutrino arrival directions and the positions in the sky of low power, high-energy emitting BL Lac objects (HBL). Assuming that $γ$-ray emitting HBL form the bulk of the sources of high-energy neutrinos above 100 TeV, we intend to calculate the number of events expected to be detected for each source by IceCube and KM3NeT. Based on a simple theoretically-motivated framework inspired by the structured jet scenario …
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 …
The IceCube telescope has detected diffuse neutrino emission, 20 events of which were reported to be above 60~TeV. In this paper, we fit the diffuse neutrino spectrum using Poisson statistics, which are the most appropriate for the low counts per energy bin. We extend the fitted energy range and exploit the fact that no neutrinos were detected above 2~PeV, despite the high detector sensitivity around the Glashow resonance at 6.3\,PeV and beyond. A best-fit power-law slope of $α=2.9\pm 0.3$ is found with no evidence for a high-energy cutoff. This slope is steeper than $α=2.3\pm 0.3$ found by th…
Since the discovery of a neutrino flux in excess of the atmospheric background by the IceCube Collaboration, searches for the astrophysical sources have been ongoing. Due to the steeply falling background towards higher energies, the PeV events detected in three years of IceCube data are the most likely ones to be of extraterrestrial origin. Even excluding the PeV events detected so far, the neutrino flux is well above the atmospheric background, so it is likely that a number of sub-PeV events originate from the same astrophysical sources that produce the PeV events. We study the high-energy p…
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…
We present our follow-up observations to search for an electromagnetic counterpart of the IceCube high-energy neutrino, IceCube-170922A. Monitoring observations of a likely counterpart, TXS 0506+056, are also described. First, we quickly took optical and near-infrared images of 7 flat-spectrum radio sources within the IceCube error region right after the neutrino detection and found a rapid flux decline of TXS 0506+056 in Kanata/HONIR J-band data. Motivated by this discovery, intensive follow-up observations of TXS 0506+056 are continuously done, including our monitoring imaging observations, …
Cosmic ray interactions that produce high-energy neutrinos also inevitably generate high-energy gamma rays, which finally contribute to the diffuse high-energy gamma-ray background after they escape the sources. It was recently found that, the high flux of neutrinos at $\sim30$ TeV detected by IceCube lead to a cumulative gamma-ray flux exceeding the Fermi isotropic gamma-ray background at 10-100 GeV, implying that the neutrinos are produced by hidden sources of cosmic rays, where GeV-TeV gamma-rays are not transparent. Here we suggest that relativistic jets in tidal disruption events (TDEs) o…
Neutrino events from IceCube have recently been associated with multiple astrophysical sources. Interestingly, these likely detections represent three distinct astrophysical source types: active galactic nuclei (AGN), blazars, and tidal disruption events (TDE). Here we compute the expected contributions of AGNs, blazars and TDEs to the overall cosmic neutrino flux detected by IceCube based on the associated events, IceCube's sensitivity, and the source types' astrophysical properties. We find that, despite being the most commonly identified sources, blazars cannot contribute more than 11% of t…
We present a search for neutrinos in coincidence in time and direction with four fast radio bursts (FRBs) detected by the Parkes and Green Bank radio telescopes during the first year of operation of the complete IceCube Neutrino Observatory (May 2011 through May 2012). The neutrino sample consists of 138,322 muon neutrino candidate events, which are dominated by atmospheric neutrinos and muons but also contain an astrophysical neutrino component. Considering only neutrinos detected on the same day as each FRB, zero IceCube events were found to be compatible with the FRB directions within the e…
We discuss the possibility that the IceCube neutrino telescope might be observing the Fermi Bubbles. If the bubbles discovered in gamma rays originate from accelerated protons, they should be strong emitters of high energy (> GeV) neutrinos. These neutrinos are detectable as shower- or track-like events at a Km^3 neutrino observatory. For a primary cosmic ray cutoff energy at or above 10 PeV, the Fermi Bubble flux substantially exceeds the atmospheric background, and could account for up to ~ 4-5 of the 28 events detected above ~ 30 TeV at IceCube. Running the detector for ~ 5-7 more years sho…
Deep Optical Follow-up Observations to IceCube Cosmic Neutrinos: a case for IC230724A with Subaru/HSC and prospects with Rubin/LSST
Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Tohoku University（东北大学前沿跨学科研究院）；Astronomical Institute, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University（东北大学理学研究科天文学研究所）；Division for the Establishment of Frontier Sciences, Organization for Advanced Studies, Tohoku University（东北大学高级研究机构前沿科学部）；Astronomy Research Research Center, Chiba Institute of Technology（千叶工业大学天文研究中心）；International Center for Hadron Astrophysics, Chiba University（千叶大学国际强子天体物理中心）；National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, National Institutes of Natural Sciences（日本国立天文台，国立自然科学研究院）；Department of Astronomical Science, School of Physical Sciences, The Graduate University of Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI)（高级研究大学院大学（SOKENDAI）理学研究科天文学系）；Department of Physics, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Konan University（神户学院大学理工学部物理学系）
The IceCube Collaboration initially reported the detection of 37 extraterrestrial neutrinos in the TeV - PeV energy range. The reconstructed neutrino events were obtained during three consecutive years of data taking, from 2010 to 2013. Although these events have been discussed to have an extragalactic origin, they have not been correlated to any known source. Recently, the IceCube Collaboration reported a neutrino-induced muon event with energy of $2.6\pm0.3$ PeV which corresponds to the highest event ever detected. Neither the reconstructed direction of this event (J2000.0), detected on June…
I study the possibility of directly detecting Ultra-high energy (UHE from now on) WIMPs by the IceCube experiment, via the WIMPs interaction with the nuclei in the ice. I evaluate galactic and extragalactic UHE WIMP and astrophysical and atmospheric neutrino event rates at energy range of 10 TeV - 10 PeV. I assume UHE WIMPs $χ$ are only from the decay of superheavy dark matter $ϕ$, that is $ϕ\toχ\barχ$. If the lifetime of superheavy dark matter $τ_ϕ$ is taken to be $5\times10^{21}$s, WIMPs can be detected at energies above O(40-100)TeV in this detection. Since UHE WIMP fluxes are actually depe…
The realtime follow-up of neutrino events is a promising approach to search for astrophysical neutrino sources. It has so far provided compelling evidence for a neutrino point source: the flaring gamma-ray blazar TXS 0506+056 observed in coincidence with the high-energy neutrino IceCube-170922A detected by IceCube. The detection of very-high-energy gamma rays (VHE, $\mathrm{E} > 100\,\mathrm{GeV}$) from this source helped establish the coincidence and constrained the modeling of the blazar emission at the time of the IceCube event. The four major imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope arrays …
The IceCube observatory is the first cubic kilometre scale instrument in the field of high-energy neutrino astronomy and cosmic rays. In 2009, following five successful deployment seasons, IceCube consisted of 59 strings of optical modules in the South Pole ice, together with 118 air shower detectors in the IceTop surface array. The range of physics topics includes neutrino signals from astrophysical sources, dark matter, exotic particle physics, cosmic rays, and atmospheric neutrinos. The current IceCube status and selected results are described. Anticipated future developments are also discu…
Even though there are strong astrophysical and cosmological indications to support the existence of dark matter, its exact nature remains unknown. We expect dark matter to produce standard model particles when annihilating or decaying, assuming that it is composed of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). These standard model particles could in turn yield neutrinos that can be detected by the IceCube neutrino telescope. The Milky Way is expected to be permeated by a dark matter halo with an increased density towards its centre. This halo is expected to yield the strongest dark matter an…
