No Arabic abstract
Air-Cherenkov telescopes have mapped the Galactic plane at TeV energies. Here we evaluate the prospects for detecting the neutrino emission from sources in the Galactic plane assuming that the highest energy photons originate from the decay of pions, which yields a straightforward prediction for the neutrino flux from the decay of the associated production of charged pions. Four promising sources are identified based on having a large flux and a flat spectrum. We subsequently evaluate the probability of their identification above the atmospheric neutrino background in IceCube data as a function of time. We show that observing them over the twenty-year lifetime of the instrumentation is likely, and that some should be observable at the $3,sigma$ level with six years of data. In the absence of positive results, we derive constraints on the spectral index and cut-off energy of the sources, assuming a hadronic acceleration mechanism.
The importance of detecting neutrinos from a Milky Way core-collapse supernova is well known. An under-studied phase is proto-neutron star cooling. For SN 1987A, this seemingly began at about 2 s, and is thus probed by only 6 of the 19 events (and only the $bar{ u}_e$ flavor) in the Kamiokande-II and IMB detectors. With the higher statistics expected for present and near-future detectors, it should be possible to measure detailed neutrino signals out to very late times. We present the first comprehensive study of neutrino detection during the proto-neutron star cooling phase, considering a variety of outcomes, using all flavors, and employing detailed detector physics. For our nominal model, the event yields (at 10 kpc) after 10 s -- the approximate duration of the SN 1987A signal -- far exceed the entire SN 1987A yield, with $simeq$250 $bar{ u}_e$ events (to 50 s) in Super-Kamiokande, $simeq$110 $ u_e$ events (to 40 s) in DUNE, and $simeq$10 $ u_mu, u_tau, bar{ u}_mu, bar{ u}_tau$ events (to 20 s) in JUNO. These data would allow unprecedented probes of the proto-neutron star, including the onset of neutrino transparency and hence its transition to a neutron star. If a black hole forms, even at very late times, this can be clearly identified. But will the detectors fulfill their potential for this perhaps once-ever opportunity for an all-flavor, high-statistics detection of a core collapse? Maybe. Further work is urgently needed, especially for DUNE to thoroughly investigate and improve its MeV capabilities.
Magnetars are neutron stars with very strong magnetic fields on the order of $10^{13}$ to $10^{15}$ G. Young magnetars with oppositely-oriented magnetic fields and spin moments may emit high-energy (HE) neutrinos from their polar caps as they may be able to accelerate cosmic rays to above the photomeson threshold (Zhang et al. 2003). Giant flares of soft gamma-ray repeaters (a subclass of magnetars) may also produce HE neutrinos and therefore a HE neutrino flux from this class is potentially detectable (Ioka et al. 2005). Here we present plans to search for neutrino emission from magnetars listed in the McGill Online Magnetar Catalog using 10 years of well-reconstructed IceCube muon-neutrino events looking for significant clustering around magnetars direction. IceCube is a cubic kilometer neutrino observatory at the South Pole and has been fully operational for the past ten years.
High-energy (TeV-PeV) cosmic neutrinos are expected to be produced in extremely energetic astrophysical sources such as active galactic nuclei. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole has recently detected a diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux. While the flux is consistent with all flavors of neutrinos being present, identification of tau neutrinos within the flux is yet to occur. Although tau neutrino production is thought to be low at the source, an equal fraction of neutrinos are expected at Earth due to averaged neutrino oscillations over astronomical distances. Above a few hundred TeV, tau neutrinos become resolvable in IceCube with negligible background from cosmic-ray induced atmospheric neutrinos. Identification of tau neutrinos within the observed flux is crucial to precise measurement of its flavor content, which could serve to test fundamental neutrino properties over extremely long baselines, and possibly shed light on new physics beyond the Standard Model. We present the analysis method and results from a recent search for astrophysical tau neutrinos in three years of IceCube data.
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 the limited deposited energy and the non-observation of events at higher energy, while their observation is consistent with an astrophysical origin. Our limits on cosmogenic neutrino fluxes disfavor the UHECR sources having cosmological evolution stronger than the star formation rate, e.g., active galactic nuclei and $gamma$-ray bursts, assuming proton-dominated UHECRs. Constraints on UHECR sources including mixed and heavy UHECR compositions are obtained for models of neutrino production within UHECR sources. Our limit disfavors a significant part of parameter space for active galactic nuclei and new-born pulsar models.
We study in detail the ability of the nominal configuration of the IceCube neutrino telescope (with 80 strings) to probe the parameter space of the Constrained MSSM (CMSSM) favoured by current collider and cosmological data. Adopting conservative assumptions about the galactic halo model and the expected experiment performance, we find that IceCube has a probability between 2% and 12% of achieving a 5sigma detection of dark matter annihilation in the Sun, depending on the choice of priors for the scalar and gaugino masses and on the astrophysical assumptions. We identify the most important annihilation channels in the CMSSM parameter space favoured by current constraints, and we demonstrate that assuming that the signal is dominated by a single annihilation channel canlead to large systematic errors in the inferred WIMP annihilation cross section. We demonstrate that ~ 66% of the CMSSM parameter space violates the equilibrium condition between capture and annihilation in the center of the Sun. By cross-correlating our predictions with direct detection methods, we conclude that if IceCube does detect a neutrino flux from the Sun at high significance while direct detection experiments do not find a signal above a spin-independent cross section sigma_SI^p larger than 5x10^{-9} pb, the CMSSM will be strongly disfavoured, given standard astrophysical assumptions for the WIMP distribution. This result is robust with respect to a change of priors. We argue that the proposed low-energy DeepCore extension of IceCube will be an ideal instrument to focus on relevant CMSSM areas of parameter space.