0000000000344841
AUTHOR
John Heise
First year performance of the IceCube neutrino telescope
The first sensors of the IceCube neutrino observatory were deployed at the South Pole during the austral summer of 2004-2005 and have been producing data since February 2005. One string of 60 sensors buried in the ice and a surface array of eight ice Cherenkov tanks took data until December 2005 when deployment of the next set of strings and tanks began. We have analyzed these data, demonstrating that the performance of the system meets or exceeds design requirements. Times are determined across the whole array to a relative precision of better than 3 ns, allowing reconstruction of muon tracks and light bursts in the ice, of air-showers in the surface array and of events seen in coincidence…
The IceCube data acquisition system: Signal capture, digitization, and timestamping
IceCube is a km-scale neutrino observatory under construction at the South Pole with sensors both in the deep ice (InIce) and on the surface (IceTop). The sensors, called Digital Optical Modules (DOMs), detect, digitize and timestamp the signals from optical Cherenkov-radiation photons. The DOM Main Board (MB) data acquisition subsystem is connected to the central DAQ in the IceCube Laboratory (ICL) by a single twisted copper wire-pair and transmits packetized data on demand. Time calibration is maintained throughout the array by regular transmission to the DOMs of precisely timed analog signals, synchronized to a central GPS-disciplined clock. The design goals and consequent features, func…
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
Determination of the atmospheric neutrino flux and searches for new physics with AMANDA-II
The AMANDA-II detector, operating since 2000 in the deep ice at the geographic South Pole, has accumulated a large sample of atmospheric muon neutrinos in the 100 GeV to 10 TeV energy range. The zenith angle and energy distribution of these events can be used to search for various phenomenological signatures of quantum gravity in the neutrino sector, such as violation of Lorentz invariance (VLI) or quantum decoherence (QD). Analyzing a set of 5511 candidate neutrino events collected during 1387 days of livetime from 2000 to 2006, we find no evidence for such effects and set upper limits on VLI and QD parameters using a maximum likelihood method. Given the absence of evidence for new flavor-…
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.
Multiyear search for a diffuse flux of muon neutrinos with AMANDA-II
A search for TeV - PeV muon neutrinos from unresolved sources was performed on AMANDA-II data collected between 2000 and 2003 with an equivalent livetime of 807 days. This diffuse analysis sought to find an extraterrestrial neutrino flux from sources with non-thermal components. The signal is expected to have a harder spectrum than the atmospheric muon and neutrino backgrounds. Since no excess of events was seen in the data over the expected background, an upper limit of E^{2}\Phi_{90% C.L.} < 7.4 x 10^{-8} GeV cm^{-2} s^{-1} sr^{-1} is placed on the diffuse flux of muon neutrinos with a \Phi \propto E^{-2} spectrum in the energy range 16 TeV to 2.5 PeV. This is currently the most sensitive…
Five years of searches for point sources of astrophysical neutrinos with the AMANDA-II neutrino telescope
We report the results of a five-year survey of the northern sky to search for point sources of high energy neutrinos. The search was performed on the data collected with the AMANDA-II neutrino telescope in the years 2000 to 2004, with a live-time of 1001 days. The sample of selected events consists of 4282 upward going muon tracks with high reconstruction quality and an energy larger than about 100 GeV. We found no indication of point sources of neutrinos and set 90% confidence level flux upper limits for an all-sky search and also for a catalog of 32 selected sources. For the all-sky search, our average (over declination and right ascension) experimentally observed upper limit \Phi^{0}=(E/…
ERRATUM: "Search for High-Energy Muon Neutrinos from the "Naked-Eye" GRB 080319B with the Icecube Neutrino Telescope" (2009, ApJ, 701, 1721)
We have noticed some mistakes in formulae (A2) and (A5) in the appendix of our paper. The errors are not present in the code used in the analysis and hence none of the plots or results is affected. The correct formulae are below.
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…
Limits on a muon flux from neutralino annihilations in the sun with the IceCube 22-string detector.
A search for muon neutrinos from neutralino annihilations in the Sun has been performed with the IceCube 22-string neutrino detector using data collected in 104.3 days of live-time in 2007. No excess over the expected atmospheric background has been observed. Upper limits have been obtained on the annihilation rate of captured neutralinos in the Sun and converted to limits on the WIMP-proton cross-sections for WIMP masses in the range 250 - 5000 GeV. These results are the most stringent limits to date on neutralino annihilation in the Sun.