0000000001099513
AUTHOR
M. Day
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…
T2K neutrino flux prediction
The Tokai-to-Kamioka (T2K) experiment studies neutrino oscillations using an off-axismuon neutrino beam with a peak energy of about 0.6 GeV that originates at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex accelerator facility. Interactions of the neutrinos are observed at near detectors placed at 280 m from the production target and at the far detector-Super-Kamiokande-located 295 km away. The flux prediction is an essential part of the successful prediction of neutrino interaction rates at the T2K detectors and is an important input to T2K neutrino oscillation and cross section measurements. A FLUKA and GEANT3-based simulation models the physical processes involved in the neutrino producti…
Astrophysical neutrinos and cosmic rays observed by IceCube
The core mission of the IceCube neutrino observatory is to study the origin and propagation of cosmic rays. IceCube, with its surface component IceTop, observes multiple signatures to accomplish this mission. Most important are the astrophysical neutrinos that are produced in interactions of cosmic rays, close to their sources and in interstellar space. IceCube is the first instrument that measures the properties of this astrophysical neutrino flux and constrains its origin. In addition, the spectrum, composition, and anisotropy of the local cosmic-ray flux are obtained from measurements of atmospheric muons and showers. Here we provide an overview of recent findings from the analysis of Ic…
Measurements of the T2K neutrino beam properties using the INGRID on-axis near detector
Precise measurement of neutrino beam direction and intensity was achieved based on a new concept with modularized neutrino detectors. INGRID (Interactive Neutrino GRID) is an on-axis near detector for the T2K long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment. INGRID consists of 16 identical modules arranged in horizontal and vertical arrays around the beam center. The module has a sandwich structure of iron target plates and scintillator trackers. INGRID directly monitors the muon neutrino beam profile center and intensity using the number of observed neutrino events in each module. The neutrino beam direction is measured with accuracy better than 0.4 mrad from the measured profile center. The …
Observation of High-Energy Astrophysical Neutrinos in Three Years of IceCube Data
A search for high-energy neutrinos interacting within the IceCube detector between 2010 and 2012 provided the first evidence for a high-energy neutrino flux of extraterrestrial origin. Results from an analysis using the same methods with a third year (2012-2013) of data from the complete IceCube detector are consistent with the previously reported astrophysical flux in the 100 TeV - PeV range at the level of $10^{-8}\, \mathrm{GeV}\, \mathrm{cm}^{-2}\, \mathrm{s}^{-1}\, \mathrm{sr}^{-1}$ per flavor and reject a purely atmospheric explanation for the combined 3-year data at $5.7 \sigma$. The data are consistent with expectations for equal fluxes of all three neutrino flavors and with isotrop…
The IceCube realtime alert system
Following the detection of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos in 2013, their origin is still unknown. Aiming for the identification of an electromagnetic counterpart of a rapidly fading source, we have implemented a realtime analysis framework for the IceCube neutrino observatory. Several analyses selecting neutrinos of astrophysical origin are now operating in realtime at the detector site in Antarctica and are producing alerts to the community to enable rapid follow-up observations. The goal of these observations is to locate the astrophysical objects responsible for these neutrino signals. This paper highlights the infrastructure in place both at the South Pole detector site and at IceC…
Neutrino oscillation studies with IceCube-DeepCore
IceCube, a gigaton-scale neutrino detector located at the South Pole, was primarily designed to search for astrophysical neutrinos with energies of PeV and higher. This goal has been achieved with the detection of the highest energy neutrinos to date. At the other end of the energy spectrum, the DeepCore extension lowers the energy threshold of the detector to approximately 10 GeV and opens the door for oscillation studies using atmospheric neutrinos. An analysis of the disappearance of these neutrinos has been completed, with the results produced being complementary with dedicated oscillation experiments. Following a review of the detector principle and performance, the method used to make…
PINGU: a vision for neutrino and particle physics at the South Pole
The Precision IceCube Next Generation Upgrade (PINGU) is a proposed low-energy in-fill extension to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. With detection technology modeled closely on the successful IceCube example, PINGU will provide a 6Mton effective mass for neutrino detection with an energy threshold of a few GeV. With an unprecedented sample of over 60,000 atmospheric neutrinos per year in this energy range, PINGU will make highly competitive measurements of neutrino oscillation parameters in an energy range over an order of magnitude higher than long-baseline neutrino beam experiments. PINGU will measure the mixing parameters $\theta_{\rm 23}$ and $\Delta m^2_{\rm 32}$, including the octan…
Probing the origin of cosmic-rays with extremely high energy neutrinos using the IceCube Observatory
We have searched for extremely high energy neutrinos using data taken with the IceCube detector between May 2010 and May 2012. Two neutrino induced particle shower events with energies around 1 PeV were observed, as reported previously. In this work, we investigate whether these events could originate from cosmogenic neutrinos produced in the interactions of ultra-high energy cosmic-rays with ambient photons while propagating through intergalactic space. Exploiting IceCube's large exposure for extremely high energy neutrinos and the lack of observed events above 100 PeV, we can rule out the corresponding models at more than 90% confidence level. The model independent quasi-differential 90% …
Measurement of Atmospheric Neutrino Oscillations at 6–56 GeV with IceCube DeepCore
We present a measurement of the atmospheric neutrino oscillation parameters using three years of data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. The DeepCore infill array in the center of IceCube enables the detection and reconstruction of neutrinos produced by the interaction of cosmic rays in Earth's atmosphere at energies as low as ∼5 GeV. That energy threshold permits measurements of muon neutrino disappearance, over a range of baselines up to the diameter of the Earth, probing the same range of L/Eν as long-baseline experiments but with substantially higher-energy neutrinos. This analysis uses neutrinos from the full sky with reconstructed energies from 5.6 to 56 GeV. We measure Δm322=2.31…
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}^…
Search for sterile neutrino mixing using three years of IceCube DeepCore data
Physical review / D 95(11), 112002(2017). doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.95.112002
Searches for small-scale anisotropies from neutrino point sources with three years of IceCube data
Recently, IceCube found evidence for a diffuse signal of astrophysical neutrinos in an energy range of $60\,\mathrm{TeV}$ to the $\mathrm{PeV}$-scale. The origin of those events, being a key to understanding the origin of cosmic rays, is still an unsolved question. So far, analyses have not succeeded to resolve the diffuse signal into point-like sources. Searches including a maximum-likelihood-ratio test, based on the reconstructed directions and energies of the detected down- and up-going neutrino candidates, were also performed on IceCube data leading to the exclusion of bright point sources. In this paper, we present two methods to search for faint neutrino point sources in three years o…
The IceProd framework: distributed data processing for the IceCube neutrino observatory
IceCube is a one-gigaton instrument located at the geographic South Pole, designed to detect cosmic neutrinos, identify the particle nature of dark matter, and study high-energy neutrinos themselves. Simulation of the IceCube detector and processing of data require a significant amount of computational resources. This paper presents the first detailed description of IceProd, a lightweight distributed management system designed to meet these requirements. It is driven by a central database in order to manage mass production of simulations and analysis of data produced by the IceCube detector. IceProd runs as a separate layer on top of other middleware and can take advantage of a variety of c…
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 …
Atmospheric and astrophysical neutrinos above 1 TeV interacting in IceCube
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory was designed primarily to search for high-energy (TeV--PeV) neutrinos produced in distant astrophysical objects. A search for $\gtrsim 100$~TeV neutrinos interacting inside the instrumented volume has recently provided evidence for an isotropic flux of such neutrinos. At lower energies, IceCube collects large numbers of neutrinos from the weak decays of mesons in cosmic-ray air showers. Here we present the results of a search for neutrino interactions inside IceCube's instrumented volume between 1~TeV and 1~PeV in 641 days of data taken from 2010--2012, lowering the energy threshold for neutrinos from the southern sky below 10 TeV for the first time, far bel…
Characterization of the atmospheric muon flux in IceCube
Muons produced in atmospheric cosmic ray showers account for the by far dominant part of the event yield in large-volume underground particle detectors. The IceCube detector, with an instrumented volume of about a cubic kilometer, has the potential to conduct unique investigations on atmospheric muons by exploiting the large collection area and the possibility to track particles over a long distance. Through detailed reconstruction of energy deposition along the tracks, the characteristics of muon bundles can be quantified, and individual particles of exceptionally high energy identified. The data can then be used to constrain the cosmic ray primary flux and the contribution to atmospheric …
Search for neutrino-induced particle showers with IceCube-40
We report on the search for neutrino-induced particle-showers, so-called cascades, in the IceCube-40 detector. The data for this search was collected between April 2008 and May 2009 when the first 40 IceCube strings were deployed and operational. Three complementary searches were performed, each optimized for different energy regimes. The analysis with the lowest energy threshold (2 TeV) targeted atmospheric neutrinos. A total of 67 events were found, consistent with the expectation of 41 atmospheric muons and 30 atmospheric neutrino events. The two other analyses targeted a harder, astrophysical neutrino flux. The analysis with an intermediate threshold of 25 TeV lead to the observation of…
Indication of electron neutrino appearance from an accelerator-produced off-axis muon neutrino beam
The T2K experiment observes indications of $\nu_\mu\rightarrow \nu_e$ appearance in data accumulated with $1.43\times10^{20}$ protons on target. Six events pass all selection criteria at the far detector. In a three-flavor neutrino oscillation scenario with $|\Delta m_{23}^2|=2.4\times10^{-3}$ eV$^2$, $\sin^2 2\theta_{23}=1$ and $\sin^2 2\theta_{13}=0$, the expected number of such events is 1.5$\pm$0.3(syst.). Under this hypothesis, the probability to observe six or more candidate events is 7$\times10^{-3}$, equivalent to 2.5$\sigma$ significance. At 90% C.L., the data are consistent with 0.03(0.04)$<\sin^2 2\theta_{13}<$ 0.28(0.34) for $\delta_{\rm CP}=0$ and a normal (inverted) hierarchy.
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 …
First Muon-Neutrino Disappearance Study with an Off-Axis Beam
We report a measurement of muon-neutrino disappearance in the T2K experiment. The 295-km muon-neutrino beam from Tokai to Kamioka is the first implementation of the off-axis technique in a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment. With data corresponding to 1.43 × 10(20) protons on target, we observe 31 fully-contained single μ-like ring events in Super-Kamiokande, compared with an expectation of 104 ± 14(syst) events without neutrino oscillations. The best-fit point for two-flavor νμ → ντ oscillations is sin 2(2θ(23)) = 0.98 and |Δm(2)(32)| = 2.65 × 10(−3) eV2. The boundary of the 90% confidence region includes the points (sin2 (2θ(23)), |Δm(2)(32)|) = (1.0, 3.1 × 10(−3) eV2), (0.84, …
Measurement of the AtmosphericνeSpectrum with IceCube
We present a measurement of the atmospheric $\nu_e$ spectrum at energies between 0.1 TeV and 100 TeV using data from the first year of the complete IceCube detector. Atmospheric $\nu_e$ originate mainly from the decays of kaons produced in cosmic-ray air showers. This analysis selects 1078 fully contained events in 332 days of livetime, then identifies those consistent with particle showers. A likelihood analysis with improved event selection extends our previous measurement of the conventional $\nu_e$ fluxes to higher energies. The data constrain the conventional $\nu_e$ flux to be $1.3^{+0.4}_{-0.3}$ times a baseline prediction from a Honda's calculation, including the knee of the cosmic-…
Search for a diffuse flux of astrophysical muon neutrinos with the IceCube 59-string configuration
A search for high-energy neutrinos was performed using data collected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory from May 2009 to May 2010, when the array was running in its 59-string configuration. The data sample was optimized to contain muon neutrino induced events with a background contamination of atmospheric muons of less than 1%. These data, which are dominated by atmospheric neutrinos, are analyzed with a global likelihood fit to search for possible contributions of prompt atmospheric and astrophysical neutrinos, neither of which have yet been identified. Such signals are expected to follow a harder energy spectrum than conventional atmospheric neutrinos. In addition, the zenith angle dist…
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…
Improvement in fast particle track reconstruction with robust statistics
The IceCube project has transformed one cubic kilometer of deep natural Antarctic ice into a Cherenkov detector. Muon neutrinos are detected and their direction inferred by mapping the light produced by the secondary muon track inside the volume instrumented with photomultipliers. Reconstructing the muon track from the observed light is challenging due to noise, light scattering in the ice medium, and the possibility of simultaneously having multiple muons inside the detector, resulting from the large flux of cosmic ray muons. This manuscript describes work on two problems: (1) the track reconstruction problem, in which, given a set of observations, the goal is to recover the track of a muo…
Measurement of the Inclusive NuMu Charged Current Cross Section on Carbon in the Near Detector of the T2K Experiment
T2K has performed the first measurement of nu(mu) inclusive charged current interactions on carbon at neutrino energies of similar to 1 GeV where the measurement is reported as a flux-averaged double differential cross section in muon momentum and angle. The flux is predicted by the beam Monte Carlo and external data, including the results from the NA61/SHINE experiment. The data used for this measurement were taken in 2010 and 2011, with a total of 10.8 x 10(19) protons-on-target. The analysis is performed on 4485 inclusive charged current interaction candidates selected in the most upstream fine-grained scintillator detector of the near detector. The flux-averaged total cross section is (…
Determining neutrino oscillation parameters from atmospheric muon neutrino disappearance with three years of IceCube DeepCore data
We present a measurement of neutrino oscillations via atmospheric muon neutrino disappearance with three years of data of the completed IceCube neutrino detector. DeepCore, a region of denser instrumentation, enables the detection and reconstruction of atmospheric muon neutrinos between 10 GeV and 100 GeV, where a strong disappearance signal is expected. The detector volume surrounding DeepCore is used as a veto region to suppress the atmospheric muon background. Neutrino events are selected where the detected Cherenkov photons of the secondary particles minimally scatter, and the neutrino energy and arrival direction are reconstructed. Both variables are used to obtain the neutrino oscilla…
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…
IceCube search for dark matter annihilation in nearby galaxies and galaxy clusters
Physical review / D 88(12), 122001 (2013). doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.88.122001
The T2K Experiment
The T2K experiment is a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment. Its main goal is to measure the last unknown lepton sector mixing angle {\theta}_{13} by observing {\nu}_e appearance in a {\nu}_{\mu} beam. It also aims to make a precision measurement of the known oscillation parameters, {\Delta}m^{2}_{23} and sin^{2} 2{\theta}_{23}, via {\nu}_{\mu} disappearance studies. Other goals of the experiment include various neutrino cross section measurements and sterile neutrino searches. The experiment uses an intense proton beam generated by the J-PARC accelerator in Tokai, Japan, and is composed of a neutrino beamline, a near detector complex (ND280), and a far detector (Super-Kamiokande)…
Evidence of Electron Neutrino Appearance in a Muon Neutrino Beam
The T2K Collaboration reports evidence for electron neutrino appearance at the atmospheric mass splitting, vertical bar Delta m(32)(2)vertical bar approximate to 2.4 X 10(-3) eV(2). An excess of electron neutrino interactions over background is observed from a muon neutrino beam with a peak energy of 0.6 GeV at the Super-Kamiokande (SK) detector 295 km from the beam's origin. Signal and background predictions are constrained by data from near detectors located 280 m from the neutrino production target. We observe 11 electron neutrino candidate events at the SK detector when a background of 3.3 +/- 0.4(syst) events is expected. The background-only hypothesis is rejected with a p value of 0.0…