More Like this

1. Search for dark matter from the center of the Earth with 10 years of IceCube data

   https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-025-14144-7  

   Abbasi, R; Ackermann, M; Adams, J; Agarwalla, S K; Aguilar, J A; Ahlers, M; Alameddine, J M; Amin, N M; Andeen, K; Argüelles, C; et al (May 2025, The European Physical Journal C)

   Abstract The nature of dark matter remains unresolved in fundamental physics. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), which could explain the nature of dark matter, can be captured by celestial bodies like the Sun or Earth, leading to enhanced self-annihilation into Standard Model particles including neutrinos detectable by neutrino telescopes such as the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. This article presents a search for muon neutrinos from the center of the Earth performed with 10 years of IceCube data using a track-like event selection. We considered a number of WIMP annihilation channels ($$\chi \chi \rightarrow \tau ^+\tau ^-$$ $\chi \chi \to {\tau }^{+}{\tau }^{-}$/$$W^+W^-$$ $W^{+}{W}^{-}$/$$b\bar{b}$$ $b\overline{b}$) and masses ranging from 10 GeV to 10 TeV. No significant excess over background due to a dark matter signal was found while the most significant result corresponds to the annihilation channel$$\chi \chi \rightarrow b\bar{b}$$ $\chi \chi \to b\overline{b}$for the mass$$m_{\chi }=250$$ $m_{\chi }=250$ GeV with a post-trial significance of$$1.06\sigma $$ $1.06\sigma$. Our results are competitive with previous such searches and direct detection experiments. Our upper limits on the spin-independent WIMP scattering are world-leading among neutrino telescopes for WIMP masses$$m_{\chi }>100$$ $m_{\chi }>100$ GeV. 

   more » « less
2. Observation of seasonal variations of the flux of high-energy atmospheric neutrinos with IceCube

   https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-023-11679-5  

   Abbasi, R; Ackermann, M; Adams, J; Agarwalla, S K; Aggarwal, N; Aguilar, J A; Ahlers, M; Alameddine, J M; Amin, N M; Andeen, K; et al (September 2023, The European Physical Journal C)

   Abstract Atmospheric muon neutrinos are produced by meson decays in cosmic-ray-induced air showers. The flux depends on meteorological quantities such as the air temperature, which affects the density of air. Competition between decay and re-interaction of those mesons in the first particle production generations gives rise to a higher neutrino flux when the air density in the stratosphere is lower, corresponding to a higher temperature. A measurement of a temperature dependence of the atmospheric$$\nu _{\mu }$$ ${\nu }_{\mu }$flux provides a novel method for constraining hadronic interaction models of air showers. It is particularly sensitive to the production of kaons. Studying this temperature dependence for the first time requires a large sample of high-energy neutrinos as well as a detailed understanding of atmospheric properties. We report the significant ($$> 10 \; \sigma $$ $>10\sigma$) observation of a correlation between the rate of more than 260,000 neutrinos, detected by IceCube between 2012 and 2018, and atmospheric temperatures of the stratosphere, measured by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA’s AQUA satellite. For the observed 10$$\%$$ $\%$seasonal change of effective atmospheric temperature we measure a 3.5(3)$$\%$$ $\%$change in the muon neutrino flux. This observed correlation deviates by about 2-3 standard deviations from the expected correlation of 4.3$$\%$$ $\%$as obtained from theoretical predictions under the assumption of various hadronic interaction models. 

   more » « less
3. Search for Neutrino Emission from Hard X-Ray AGN with IceCube

   https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ada94b  

   Abbasi, R; Ackermann, M; Adams, J; Agarwalla, S K; Aguilar, J A; Ahlers, M; Alameddine, JM; Amin, N M; Andeen, K; Argüelles, C; et al (March 2025, The Astrophysical Journal)

   Abstract Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are promising candidate sources of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos, since they provide environments rich in matter and photon targets where cosmic-ray interactions may lead to the production of gamma rays and neutrinos. We searched for high-energy neutrino emission from AGN using the Swift-BAT Spectroscopic Survey catalog of hard X-ray sources and 12 yr of IceCube muon track data. First, upon performing a stacked search, no significant emission was found. Second, we searched for neutrinos from a list of 43 candidate sources and found an excess from the direction of two sources, the Seyfert galaxies NGC 1068 and NGC 4151. We observed NGC 1068 at flux ${\varphi }_{{\nu }_{\mu }+{\overline{\nu }}_{\mu }}$= $4.02_{-1.52}^{+1.58}\times 10^{-11}$TeV⁻¹cm⁻²s⁻¹normalized at 1 TeV, with a power-law spectral indexγ= 3.10 ${}_{-0.22}^{+0.26}$, consistent with previous IceCube results. The observation of a neutrino excess from the direction of NGC 4151 is at a posttrial significance of 2.9σ. If interpreted as an astrophysical signal, the excess observed from NGC 4151 corresponds to a flux ${\varphi }_{{\nu }_{\mu }+{\overline{\nu }}_{\mu }}$= $1.51_{-0.81}^{+0.99}\times 10^{-11}$TeV⁻¹cm⁻²s⁻¹normalized at 1 TeV andγ= 2.83 ${}_{-0.28}^{+0.35}$. 

   more » « less
4. Search for Neutrino Doublets and Triplets Using 11.4 yr of IceCube Data

   https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/adb312  

   Abbasi, R; Ackermann, M; Adams, J; Agarwalla, S K; Aguilar, J A; Ahlers, M; Alameddine, JM; Amin, N M; Andeen, K; Argüelles, C; et al (March 2025, The Astrophysical Journal)

   Abstract We report a search for high-energy astrophysical neutrino multiplets, detections of multiple neutrino clusters in the same direction within 30 days, based on an analysis of 11.4 yr of IceCube data. A new search method optimized for transient neutrino emission with a monthly timescale is employed, providing a higher sensitivity to neutrino fluxes. This result is sensitive to neutrino transient emission, reaching per-flavor flux of approximately $10^{-10}\mathrm{erg}{\mathrm{cm}}^{-2}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$from the Northern Sky in the energy rangeE ≳ 50 TeV. The number of doublets and triplets identified in this search is compatible with the atmospheric background hypothesis, which leads us to set limits on the nature of neutrino transient sources with emission timescales of one month. 

   more » « less
5. The LHC as a Neutrino-Ion Collider

   https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-024-12665-1  

   Cruz-Martinez, Juan M; Fieg, Max; Giani, Tommaso; Krack, Peter; Mäkelä, Toni; Rabemananjara, Tanjona R; Rojo, Juan (April 2024, The European Physical Journal C)

   Abstract Proton-proton collisions at the LHC generate a high-intensity collimated beam of neutrinos in the forward (beam) direction, characterised by energies of up to several TeV. The recent observation of LHC neutrinos by FASER$$\nu $$ $\nu$and SND@LHC signifies that this previously overlooked particle beam is now available for scientific investigation. Here we quantify the impact that neutrino deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) measurements at the LHC would have on the parton distributions (PDFs) of protons and heavy nuclei. We generate projections for DIS structure functions for FASER$$\nu $$ $\nu$and SND@LHC at Run III, as well as for the FASER$$\nu $$ $\nu$2, AdvSND, and FLArE experiments to be hosted at the proposed Forward Physics Facility (FPF) operating concurrently with the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). We determine that up to one million electron-neutrino and muon-neutrino DIS interactions within detector acceptance can be expected by the end of the HL-LHC, covering a kinematic region inxand$$Q^2$$ $Q^2$overlapping with that of the Electron-Ion Collider. Including these DIS projections in global (n)PDF analyses, specifically PDF4LHC21, NNPDF4.0, and EPPS21, reveals a significant reduction in PDF uncertainties, in particular for strangeness and the up and down valence PDFs. We show that LHC neutrino data enable improved theoretical predictions for core processes at the HL-LHC, such as Higgs and weak gauge boson production. Our analysis demonstrates that exploiting the LHC neutrino beam effectively provides CERN with a “Neutrino-Ion Collider” without requiring modifications in its accelerator infrastructure. 

   more » « less