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Abstract The LIGO/Virgo collaboration published the catalogs GWTC-1, GWTC-2.1, and GWTC-3 containing candidate gravitational-wave (GW) events detected during its runs O1, O2, and O3. These GW events can be possible sites of neutrino emission. In this paper, we present a search for neutrino counterparts of 90 GW candidates using IceCube DeepCore, the low-energy infill array of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. The search is conducted using an unbinned maximum likelihood method, within a time window of 1000 s, and uses the spatial and timing information from the GW events. The neutrinos used for the search have energies ranging from a few GeV to several tens of TeV. We do not find any significant emission of neutrinos, and place upper limits on the flux and the isotropic-equivalent energy emitted in low-energy neutrinos. We also conduct a binomial test to search for source populations potentially contributing to neutrino emission. We report a nondetection of a significant neutrino-source population with this test.
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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
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 ($$\nu _{\mu }$$ ) 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$$> 10 \; \sigma $$ 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.$$\%$$ -
Abstract The IceCube Neutrino Observatory sends realtime neutrino alerts with a high probability of being astrophysical in origin. We present a new method to correlate these events and possible candidate sources using 2089 blazars from the Fermi-LAT 4LAC-DR2 catalog and with 3413 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) from the Radio Fundamental Catalog. No statistically significant neutrino emission was found in any of the catalog searches. The result suggests that a small fraction, <1%, of the studied AGNs emit neutrinos that pass the alert criteria, and is compatible with prior evidence for neutrino emission presented by IceCube and other authors from sources such as TXS 0506 + 056 and PKS 1502 + 106. We also present cross-checks to other analyses that claim a significant correlation using similar data samples.
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Abstract Beginning in 2016, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory has sent out alerts in real time containing the information of high-energy (
E ≳ 100 TeV) neutrino candidate events with moderate to high (≳30%) probability of astrophysical origin. In this work, we use a recent catalog of such alert events, which, in addition to events announced in real time, includes events that were identified retroactively and covers the time period of 2011–2020. We also search for additional, lower-energy neutrinos from the arrival directions of these IceCube alerts. We show how performing such an analysis can constrain the contribution of rare populations of cosmic neutrino sources to the diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux. After searching for neutrino emission coincident with these alert events on various timescales, we find no significant evidence of either minute-scale or day-scale transient neutrino emission or of steady neutrino emission in the direction of these alert events. This study also shows how numerous a population of neutrino sources has to be to account for the complete astrophysical neutrino flux. Assuming that sources have the same luminosity, anE −2.5neutrino spectrum, and number densities that follow star formation rates, the population of sources has to be more numerous than 7 × 10−9Mpc−3. This number changes to 3 × 10−7Mpc−3if number densities instead have no cosmic evolution. -
The origin of high-energy cosmic rays, atomic nuclei that continuously impact Earth’s atmosphere, is unknown. Because of deflection by interstellar magnetic fields, cosmic rays produced within the Milky Way arrive at Earth from random directions. However, cosmic rays interact with matter near their sources and during propagation, which produces high-energy neutrinos. We searched for neutrino emission using machine learning techniques applied to 10 years of data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. By comparing diffuse emission models to a background-only hypothesis, we identified neutrino emission from the Galactic plane at the 4.5σ level of significance. The signal is consistent with diffuse emission of neutrinos from the Milky Way but could also arise from a population of unresolved point sources.
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Abstract Core-collapse supernovae are a promising potential high-energy neutrino source class. We test for correlation between seven years of IceCube neutrino data and a catalog containing more than 1000 core-collapse supernovae of types IIn and IIP and a sample of stripped-envelope supernovae. We search both for neutrino emission from individual supernovae as well as for combined emission from the whole supernova sample, through a stacking analysis. No significant spatial or temporal correlation of neutrinos with the cataloged supernovae was found. All scenarios were tested against the background expectation and together yield an overall p -value of 93%; therefore, they show consistency with the background only. The derived upper limits on the total energy emitted in neutrinos are 1.7 × 10 48 erg for stripped-envelope supernovae, 2.8 × 10 48 erg for type IIP, and 1.3 × 10 49 erg for type IIn SNe, the latter disfavoring models with optimistic assumptions for neutrino production in interacting supernovae. We conclude that stripped-envelope supernovae and supernovae of type IIn do not contribute more than 14.6% and 33.9%, respectively, to the diffuse neutrino flux in the energy range of about [ 10 3 –10 5 ] GeV, assuming that the neutrino energy spectrum follows a power-law with an index of −2.5. Under the same assumption, we can only constrain the contribution of type IIP SNe to no more than 59.9%. Thus, core-collapse supernovae of types IIn and stripped-envelope supernovae can both be ruled out as the dominant source of the diffuse neutrino flux under the given assumptions.more » « less
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Abstract This paper presents the results of a search for neutrinos that are spatially and temporally coincident with 22 unique, nonrepeating fast radio bursts (FRBs) and one repeating FRB (FRB 121102). FRBs are a rapidly growing class of Galactic and extragalactic astrophysical objects that are considered a potential source of high-energy neutrinos. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory’s previous FRB analyses have solely used track events. This search utilizes seven years of IceCube cascade events which are statistically independent of track events. This event selection allows probing of a longer range of extended timescales due to the low background rate. No statistically significant clustering of neutrinos was observed. Upper limits are set on the time-integrated neutrino flux emitted by FRBs for a range of extended time windows.more » « less