No Arabic abstract
In this paper we present the results of searches for periodic neutrino emission from a catalog of binary systems. Such modulation, observed in the photon flux, would be caused by the geometry of these systems. In the analysis, the period is fixed by these photon observations, while the phase and duration of the neutrino emission are treated as free parameters to be fit with the data. If the emission occurs during ~20% or less of the total period, this analysis achieves better sensitivity than a time-integrated analysis. We use the IceCube data taken from May 31, 2007 to April 5, 2008 with its 22-string configuration, and from April 5, 2008 to May 20, 2009 with its 40-string configuration. No evidence for neutrino emission is found, with the strongest excess occurring for Cygnus X-3 at 2.1 sigma significance after accounting for trials. Neutrino flux upper limits for both periodic and time-integrated emission are provided.
In this paper, after a short introduction to the physics of neutrino telescopes, we will report on first performances of the IceCube detector and a selection of preliminary results obtained from data taken while IceCube operated in a partially completed configuration (22 strings and 40 strings). We will emphasize new analysis methods recently developed for the study of the Southern Hemisphere as well as for extended regions. Based on the long term experience of AMANDA and IceCube, the South Pole ice has proven to be an ideal site for astroparticle physics. New ideas and projects about the future beyond IceCube will conclude this presentation.
This paper presents searches for flaring sources of neutrinos using the IceCube neutrino telescope. For the first time, a search is performed over the entire parameter space of energy, direction and time looking for neutrino flares of 20 microseconds to a year duration from astrophysical sources among the atmospheric neutrino and muon backgrounds. Searches which integrate over time are less sensitive to flares because they are affected by a larger background of atmospheric neutrinos and muons that can be reduced by the time constraint. Flaring sources considered here, such as active galactic nuclei, soft gamma-ray repeaters and gamma-ray bursts, are promising candidate neutrino emitters. We used mainly data taken between April 5, 2008 and May 20, 2009 by a partially completed configuration of IceCube with 40 strings. For the presented searches an unbinned maximum likelihood method is used with a time-dependent prior to test several different source hypotheses. An untriggered search covers any possible time-dependent emission from sources not correlated to any other observation using other astrophysical messengers such as photons. Moreover, a similar time scan is performed for a predefined catalogue of sources that exhibit intense photon flares. Searches triggered by multi-wavelength information on flares from blazars and soft gamma-ray repeaters are performed using the 40 string data and also the data taken by the previous configuration of 22 strings in operation between May 31, 2007 and April 5, 2008. Flares for which extensive and continuous monitoring is available from Fermi-LAT and SWIFT and flares detected by imaging Cherenkov telescopes with shorter time-scale monitoring are considered. The results from all searches are compatible with a fluctuation of the background.
IceCube has become the first neutrino telescope with a sensitivity below the TeV neutrino flux predicted from gamma-ray bursts if GRBs are responsible for the observed cosmic-ray flux above $10^{18}$ eV. Two separate analyses using the half-complete IceCube detector, one a dedicated search for neutrinos from $p gamma$-interactions in the prompt phase of the GRB fireball, and the other a generic search for any neutrino emission from these sources over a wide range of energies and emission times, produced no evidence for neutrino emission, excluding prevailing models at 90% confidence.
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 14 cascade-like events, again consistent with the prediction of 3.0 atmospheric neutrino and 7.7 atmospheric muon events. We hence set an upper limit of $E^2 Phi_{lim} leq 7.46times10^{-8},mathrm{GeV sr^{-1} s^{-1} cm^{-2}}$ (90% C.L.) on the diffuse flux from astrophysical neutrinos of all neutrino flavors, applicable to the energy range 25 TeV to 5 PeV, assuming an $E_{ u}^{-2}$ spectrum and a neutrino flavor ratio of 1:1:1 at the Earth. The third analysis utilized a larger and optimized sample of atmospheric muon background simulation, leading to a higher energy threshold of 100 TeV. Three events were found over a background prediction of 0.04 atmospheric muon events and 0.21 events from the flux of conventional and prompt atmospheric neutrinos. Including systematic errors this corresponds to a $2.7sigma$ excess with respect to the background-only hypothesis. Our observation of neutrino event candidates above 100 TeV complements IceCubes recently observed evidence for high-energy astrophysical neutrinos.
The advent of multi-messenger astronomy has allowed for new types of source searches by neutrino detectors. We present the results of the first search for 0.5 - 5 GeV astrophysical neutrinos emitted from all compact binary mergers, i.e., binary black hole, neutron star black, mass gap and binary neutron star mergers, detected by the LIGO and Virgo interferometers during their three first runs of observation. We use an innovative approach that lowers the energy threshold from ~10 GeV to ~0.5 GeV and searches for an excess of GeV-scale events during astrophysical transient events. No significant excess was found from the studied mergers, and there is currently no hint of a population of GeV neutrino emitters found in the IceCube data.