0000000000208538
AUTHOR
T. Stanev
A Search for IceCube Events in the Direction of ANITA Neutrino Candidates
During the first three flights of the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment, the collaboration detected several neutrino candidates. Two of these candidate events were consistent with an ultra-high-energy up-going air shower and compatible with a tau neutrino interpretation. A third neutrino candidate event was detected in a search for Askaryan radiation in the Antarctic ice, although it is also consistent with the background expectation. The inferred emergence angle of the first two events is in tension with IceCube and ANITA limits on isotropic cosmogenic neutrino fluxes. Here, we test the hypothesis that these events are astrophysical in origin, possibly caused by a po…
Constraints on ultra-high-energy cosmic ray sources from a search for neutrinos above 10 PeV with IceCube
We report constraints on the sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) above $10^{9}$ GeV, based on an analysis of seven years of IceCube data. This analysis efficiently selects very high energy neutrino-induced events which have deposited energies from $\sim 10^6$ GeV to above $10^{11}$ GeV. Two neutrino-induced events with an estimated deposited energy of $(2.6 \pm 0.3) \times 10^6$ GeV, the highest neutrino energies observed so far, and $(7.7 \pm 2.0) \times 10^5$ GeV were detected. The atmospheric background-only hypothesis of detecting these events is rejected at 3.6$\sigma$. The hypothesis that the observed events are of cosmogenic origin is also rejected at $>$99% CL because of…
Detection of Atmospheric Muon Neutrinos with the IceCube 9-String Detector
The IceCube neutrino detector is a cubic kilometer TeV to PeV neutrino detector under construction at the geographic South Pole. The dominant population of neutrinos detected in IceCube is due to meson decay in cosmic-ray air showers. These atmospheric neutrinos are relatively well understood and serve as a calibration and verification tool for the new detector. In 2006, the detector was approximately 10% completed, and we report on data acquired from the detector in this configuration. We observe an atmospheric neutrino signal consistent with expectations, demonstrating that the IceCube detector is capable of identifying neutrino events. In the first 137.4 days of live time, 234 neutrino c…
Time-integrated Neutrino Source Searches with 10 years of IceCube Data
Physical review letters 124(5), 051103 (1-9) (2020). doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.051103
IceCube-Gen2: The Window to the Extreme Universe
The observation of electromagnetic radiation from radio to $\gamma$-ray wavelengths has provided a wealth of information about the universe. However, at PeV (10$^{15}$ eV) energies and above, most of the universe is impenetrable to photons. New messengers, namely cosmic neutrinos, are needed to explore the most extreme environments of the universe where black holes, neutron stars, and stellar explosions transform gravitational energy into non-thermal cosmic rays. The discovery of cosmic neutrinos with IceCube has opened this new window on the universe. In this white paper, we present an overview of a next-generation instrument, IceCube-Gen2, which will sharpen our understanding of the proce…
Limits on the high-energy gamma and neutrino fluxes from the SGR 1806-20 giant flare of 27 December 2004 with the AMANDA-II detector.
On December 27th 2004, a giant gamma flare from the Soft Gamma-ray Repeater 1806-20 saturated many satellite gamma-ray detectors. This event was by more than two orders of magnitude the brightest cosmic transient ever observed. If the gamma emission extends up to TeV energies with a hard power law energy spectrum, photo-produced muons could be observed in surface and underground arrays. Moreover, high-energy neutrinos could have been produced during the SGR giant flare if there were substantial baryonic outflow from the magnetar. These high-energy neutrinos would have also produced muons in an underground array. AMANDA-II was used to search for downgoing muons indicative of high-energy gamm…
IceCube search for neutrinos coincident with compact binary mergers from LIGO-Virgo's first gravitational-wave transient catalog
Using the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, we search for high-energy neutrino emission coincident with compact binary mergers observed by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave (GW) detectors during their first and second observing runs. We present results from two searches targeting emission coincident with the sky localization of each GW event within a 1000 s time window centered around the reported merger time. One search uses a model-independent unbinned maximum-likelihood analysis, which uses neutrino data from IceCube to search for pointlike neutrino sources consistent with the sky localization of GW events. The other uses the Low-Latency Algorithm for Multi-messenger Astrophysics, which …
LeptonInjector and LeptonWeighter: A neutrino event generator and weighter for neutrino observatories
We present a high-energy neutrino event generator, called LeptonInjector, alongside an event weighter, called LeptonWeighter. Both are designed for large-volume Cherenkov neutrino telescopes such as IceCube. The neutrino event generator allows for quick and flexible simulation of neutrino events within and around the detector volume, and implements the leading Standard Model neutrino interaction processes relevant for neutrino observatories: neutrino-nucleon deep-inelastic scattering and neutrino-electron annihilation. In this paper, we discuss the event generation algorithm, the weighting algorithm, and the main functions of the publicly available code, with examples.
Search for Neutrino‐induced Cascades from Gamma‐Ray Bursts with AMANDA
Using the neutrino telescope AMANDA-II, we have conducted two analyses searching for neutrino-induced cascades from gamma-ray bursts. No evidence of astrophysical neutrinos was found, and limits are presented for several models. We also present neutrino effective areas which allow the calculation of limits for any neutrino production model. The first analysis looked for a statistical excess of events within a sliding window of 1 or 100 seconds (for short and long burst classes, respectively) during the years 2001-2003. The resulting upper limit on the diffuse flux normalization times E^2 for the Waxman-Bahcall model at 1 PeV is 1.6 x 10^-6 GeV cm^-2 s^-1 sr^-1 (a factor of 120 above the the…
Searches for Sterile Neutrinos with the IceCube Detector
The IceCube neutrino telescope at the South Pole has measured the atmospheric muon neutrino spectrum as a function of zenith angle and energy in the approximate 320 GeV to 20 TeV range, to search for the oscillation signatures of light sterile neutrinos. No evidence for anomalous $\nu_\mu$ or $\bar{\nu}_\mu$ disappearance is observed in either of two independently developed analyses, each using one year of atmospheric neutrino data. New exclusion limits are placed on the parameter space of the 3+1 model, in which muon antineutrinos would experience a strong MSW-resonant oscillation. The exclusion limits extend to $\mathrm{sin}^2 2\theta_{24} \leq$ 0.02 at $\Delta m^2 \sim$ 0.3 $\mathrm{eV}^…
IceCube contributions to the XIV International Symposium on Very High Energy Cosmic Ray Interactions (ISVHECRI 2006)
IceCube contributions to the XIV International Symposium on Very High Energy Cosmic Ray Interactions (ISVHECRI 2006) Weihai, China - August 15-22
Multimessenger search for sources of gravitational waves and high-energy neutrinos: Initial results for LIGO-Virgo and IceCube
Made available in DSpace on 2022-04-29T07:21:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2014-11-17 We report the results of a multimessenger search for coincident signals from the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave observatories and the partially completed IceCube high-energy neutrino detector, including periods of joint operation between 2007-2010. These include parts of the 2005-2007 run and the 2009-2010 run for LIGO-Virgo, and IceCube's observation periods with 22, 59 and 79 strings. We find no significant coincident events, and use the search results to derive upper limits on the rate of joint sources for a range of source emission parameters. For the optimistic assumption of …
Evidence for Astrophysical Muon Neutrinos from the Northern Sky with IceCube
Results from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory have recently provided compelling evidence for the existence of a high energy astrophysical neutrino flux utilizing a dominantly Southern Hemisphere dataset consisting primarily of nu_e and nu_tau charged current and neutral current (cascade) neutrino interactions. In the analysis presented here, a data sample of approximately 35,000 muon neutrinos from the Northern sky was extracted from data taken during 659.5 days of livetime recorded between May 2010 and May 2012. While this sample is composed primarily of neutrinos produced by cosmic ray interactions in the Earth's atmosphere, the highest energy events are inconsistent with a hypothesis of …
The IceCube prototype string in Amanda
The Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array (Amanda) is a high-energy neutrino telescope. It is a lattice of optical modules (OM) installed in the clear ice below the South Pole Station. Each OM contains a photomultiplier tube (PMT) that detects photons of Cherenkov light generated in the ice by muons and electrons. IceCube is a cubic-kilometer-sized expansion of Amanda currently being built at the South Pole. In IceCube the PMT signals are digitized already in the optical modules and transmitted to the surface. A prototype string of 41 OMs equipped with this new all-digital technology was deployed in the Amanda array in the year 2000. In this paper we describe the technology and demonst…
Limits on the muon flux from neutralino annihilations at the center of the Earth with AMANDA
A search has been performed for nearly vertically upgoing neutrino-induced muons with the Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA), using data taken over the three year period 1997–99. No excess above the expected atmospheric neutrino background has been found. Upper limits at 90% confidence level have been set on the annihilation rate of neutralinos at the center of the Earth, as well as on the muon flux at AMANDA induced by neutrinos created by the annihilation products.
Characteristics of the diffuse astrophysical electron and Tau neutrino flux with six years of IceCube high energy cascade data
We report on the first measurement of the astrophysical neutrino flux using particle showers (cascades) in IceCube data from 2010-2015. Assuming standard oscillations, the astrophysical neutrinos in this dedicated cascade sample are dominated (∼90%) by electron and tau flavors. The flux, observed in the sensitive energy range from 16 TeV to 2.6 PeV, is consistent with a single power-law model as expected from Fermi-type acceleration of high energy particles at astrophysical sources. We find the flux spectral index to be γ=2.53±0.07 and a flux normalization for each neutrino flavor of φastro=1.66-0.27+0.25 at E0=100 TeV, in agreement with IceCube's complementary muon neutrino results and wit…
IceCube Sensitivity for Low-Energy Neutrinos from Nearby Supernovae ( Corrigendum )
Keywords: neutrinos ; supernovae: general ; instrumentation: detectors ; errata ; addenda Reference EPFL-ARTICLE-198916doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201117810eView record in Web of Science Record created on 2014-05-19, modified on 2017-05-12
Combined sensitivity to the neutrino mass ordering with JUNO, the IceCube Upgrade, and PINGU
Physical review / D 101(3), 032006 (1-19) (2020). doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.101.032006
An improved method for measuring muon energy using the truncated mean of dE/dx
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research / A 703, 190 - 198 (2013). doi:10.1016/j.nima.2012.11.081
IceCube: A multipurpose neutrino telescope
IceCube is a new high-energy neutrino telescope which will be coming online in the near future. IceCube will be capable of measuring fluxes of all three flavors of neutrino, and its peak neutrino energy sensitivity will be in the TeV–PeV range. Here, after a brief description of the detector, we describe its anticipated performance with a selection of physics topics: supernovae, extraterrestrial diffuse and point sources of neutrinos, gamma-ray bursts, neutrinos from WIMP annihilation, and cosmic ray composition.
On the selection of AGN neutrino source candidates for a source stacking analysis with neutrino telescopes
The sensitivity of a search for sources of TeV neutrinos can be improved by grouping potential sources together into generic classes in a procedure that is known as source stacking. In this paper, we define catalogs of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and use them to perform a source stacking analysis. The grouping of AGN into classes is done in two steps: first, AGN classes are defined, then, sources to be stacked are selected assuming that a potential neutrino flux is linearly correlated with the photon luminosity in a certain energy band (radio, IR, optical, keV, GeV, TeV). Lacking any secure detailed knowledge on neutrino production in AGN, this correlation is motivated by hadronic AGN mode…
Computational Techniques for the Analysis of Small Signals in High-Statistics Neutrino Oscillation Experiments
The current and upcoming generation of Very Large Volume Neutrino Telescopes – collecting unprecedented quantities of neutrino events – can be used to explore subtle effects in oscillation physics, such as (but not restricted to) the neutrino mass ordering. The sensitivity of an experiment to these effects can be estimated from Monte Carlo simulations. With the high number of events that will be collected, there is a trade-off between the computational expense of running such simulations and the inherent statistical uncertainty in the determined values. In such a scenario, it becomes impractical to produce and use adequately-sized sets of simulated events with traditional methods, such as M…
Constraints on Minute-Scale Transient Astrophysical Neutrino Sources
High-energy neutrino emission has been predicted for several short-lived astrophysical transients including gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), core-collapse supernovae with choked jets, and neutron star mergers. IceCube's optical and x-ray follow-up program searches for such transient sources by looking for two or more muon neutrino candidates in directional coincidence and arriving within 100 s. The measured rate of neutrino alerts is consistent with the expected rate of chance coincidences of atmospheric background events and no likely electromagnetic counterparts have been identified in Swift follow-up observations. Here, we calculate generic bounds on the neutrino flux of short-lived transient so…
Flavor Ratio of Astrophysical Neutrinos above 35 TeV in IceCube
A diffuse flux of astrophysical neutrinos above $100\,\mathrm{TeV}$ has been observed at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. Here we extend this analysis to probe the astrophysical flux down to $35\,\mathrm{TeV}$ and analyze its flavor composition by classifying events as showers or tracks. Taking advantage of lower atmospheric backgrounds for shower-like events, we obtain a shower-biased sample containing 129 showers and 8 tracks collected in three years from 2010 to 2013. We demonstrate consistency with the $(f_e:f_{\mu}:f_\tau)_\oplus\approx(1:1:1)_\oplus$ flavor ratio at Earth commonly expected from the averaged oscillations of neutrinos produced by pion decay in distant astrophysical sou…