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Abstract Radio antennas have become a standard tool for the detection of cosmic-ray air showers in the energy range above$$10^{16}\,$$ ${10}^{16}$eV. The radio signal of these air showers is generated mostly due to the deflection of electrons and positrons in the geomagnetic field, and contains information about the energy and the depth of the maximum of the air showers. Unlike the traditional air-Cherenkov and air-fluorescence techniques for the electromagnetic shower component, radio detection is not restricted to clear nights, and recent experiments have demonstrated that the measurement accuracy can compete with these traditional techniques. Numerous particle detector arrays for air showers have thus been or will be complemented by radio antennas. In particular when combined with muon detectors, the complementary information provided by the radio antennas can enhance the total accuracy for the arrival direction, energy and mass of the primary cosmic rays. Digitization and computational techniques have been crucial for this recent progress, and radio detection will play an important role in next-generation experiments for ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays. Moreover, stand-alone radio experiments are under development and will search for ultrahigh-energy photons and neutrinos in addition to cosmic rays. This article provides a brief introduction to the physics of the radio emission of air showers, an overview of air-shower observatories using radio antennas, and highlights some of their recent results. 

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. 

Abstract In this work, we present the results of searches for signatures of dark matter decay or annihilation into Standard Model particles, and secret neutrino interactions with dark matter.Neutrinos could be produced in the decay or annihilation of galactic or extragalactic dark matter.Additionally, if an interaction between dark matter and neutrinos exists then dark matter will interact with extragalactic neutrinos.In particular galactic dark matter will induce an anisotropy in the neutrino sky if this interaction is present.We use seven and a half years of the High-Energy Starting Event (HESE) sample data, which measures neutrinos in the energy range of approximately 60 TeV to 10 PeV, to study these phenomena.This all-sky event selection is dominated by extragalactic neutrinos.For dark matter of ∼ 1 PeV in mass, we constrain the velocity-averaged annihilation cross section to be smaller than 10^-23cm³/s for the exclusiveμ⁺μ^-channel and 10^-22cm³/s for the bb̅ channel.For the same mass, we constrain the lifetime of dark matter to be larger than 10²⁸s for all channels studied, except for decaying exclusively to bb̅ where it is bounded to be larger than 10²⁷s.Finally, we also search for evidence of astrophysical neutrinos scattering on galactic dark matter in two scenarios.For fermionic dark matter with a vector mediator, we constrain the dimensionless coupling associated with this interaction to be less than 0.1 for dark matter mass of 0.1 GeV and a mediator mass of 10^-4GeV.In the case of scalar dark matter with a fermionic mediator, we constrain the coupling to be less than 0.1 for dark matter and mediator masses below 1 MeV. 

Abstract Since summer 2021, the Radio Neutrino Observatory in Greenland (RNO-G) is searching for astrophysical neutrinos at energies$${>10}$$ $>10$ PeV by detecting the radio emission from particle showers in the ice around Summit Station, Greenland. We present an extensive simulation study that shows how RNO-G will be able to measure the energy of such particle cascades, which will in turn be used to estimate the energy of the incoming neutrino that caused them. The location of the neutrino interaction is determined using the differences in arrival times between channels and the electric field of the radio signal is reconstructed using a novel approach based on Information Field Theory. Based on these properties, the shower energy can be estimated. We show that this method can achieve an uncertainty of 13% on the logarithm of the shower energy after modest quality cuts and estimate how this can constrain the energy of the neutrino. The method presented in this paper is applicable to all similar radio neutrino detectors, such as the proposed radio array of IceCube-Gen2. 

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. 

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. 

Abstract The understanding of novae, the thermonuclear eruptions on the surfaces of white dwarf stars in binaries, has recently undergone a major paradigm shift. Though the bolometric luminosity of novae was long thought to arise directly from photons supplied by the thermonuclear runaway, recent gigaelectronvolt (GeV) gamma-ray observations have supported the notion that a significant portion of the luminosity could come from radiative shocks. More recently, observations of novae have lent evidence that these shocks are acceleration sites for hadrons for at least some types of novae. In this scenario, a flux of neutrinos may accompany the observed gamma rays. As the gamma rays from most novae have only been observed up to a few GeV, novae have previously not been considered as targets for neutrino telescopes, which are most sensitive at and above teraelectronvolt (TeV) energies. Here, we present the first search for neutrinos from novae with energies between a few GeV and 10 TeV using IceCube-DeepCore, a densely instrumented region of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory with a reduced energy threshold. We search both for a correlation between gamma-ray and neutrino emission as well as between optical and neutrino emission from novae. We find no evidence for neutrino emission from the novae considered in this analysis and set upper limits for all gamma-ray detected novae. 

Abstract Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have long been considered a possible source of high-energy neutrinos. While no correlations have yet been detected between high-energy neutrinos and GRBs, the recent observation of GRB 221009A—the brightest GRB observed by Fermi-GBM to date and the first one to be observed above an energy of 10 TeV—provides a unique opportunity to test for hadronic emission. In this paper, we leverage the wide energy range of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory to search for neutrinos from GRB 221009A. We find no significant deviation from background expectation across event samples ranging from MeV to PeV energies, placing stringent upper limits on the neutrino emission from this source. 

We recently reported on the radio-frequency attenuation length of cold polar ice at Summit Station, Greenland, based on bistatic radar measurements of radio-frequency bedrock echo strengths taken during the summer of 2021. Those data also include echoes attributed to stratified impurities or dielectric discontinuities within the ice sheet (layers), which allow studies of a) estimation of the relative contribution of coherent (discrete layers, e.g.) vs. incoherent (bulk volumetric, e.g.) scattering, b) the magnitude of internal layer reflection coefficients, c) limits on the azimuthal asymmetry of reflections (birefringence), and d) limits on signal dispersion in-ice over a bandwidth of ~100 MHz. We find that i) after averaging 10000 echo triggers, reflected signal observable over the thermal floor (to depths of approximately 1500 m) are consistent with being entirely coherent, ii) internal layer reflection coefficients are measured at approximately -60 to -70 dB, iii) birefringent effects for vertically propagating signals are smaller by an order of magnitude relative to comparable studies performed at South Pole, and iv) within our experimental limits, glacial ice is non-dispersive over the frequency band relevant for neutrino detection experiments.