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Register a new userObservation of the cosmic ray shadow of the Sun with the ANTARES neutrino telescope
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The ANTARES detector is an undersea neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean Sea. The search for point-like neutrino sources is one of the main goals of the ANTARES telescope, requiring a reliable method to evaluate the detector angular resolution and pointing accuracy. This work describes the study of the Sun shadow effect with the ANTARES detector. The shadow is the deficit in the atmospheric muon flux in the direction of the Sun caused by the absorption of the primary cosmic rays. This analysis is based on the data collected between 2008 and 2017 by the ANTARES telescope. The observed statistical significance of the Sun shadow detection is $3.7sigma$, with an estimated angular resolution of $0.59^circpm0.10^circ$ for downward-going muons. The pointing accuracy is found to be consistent with the expectations and no evidence of systematic pointing shifts is observed.
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ANTARES is the largest undersea neutrino telescope and it has been taking data in its final configuration for more than ten years. On their journey to the Earth, cosmic rays can be absorbed by celestial objects, like the Sun, leading to a deficit in the atmospheric muon flux measured by the ANTARES detector, the so-called Sun shadow effect. This phenomenon can be used to evaluate fundamental telescope characteristics: the detector angular resolution and pointing accuracy. This work describes the study of the Sun shadow effect using the ANTARES data collected between 2008 and 2017. The statistical significance of the Sun shadow observation is $3.7sigma$ and the estimated angular resolution value of the ANTARES telescope for downward-going muons is $0.59^{circ} pm 0.10^{circ}$, which is consistent with the expectations obtained from the Monte Carlo simulations and also with the estimation from the Moon shadow analysis of 2007-2016 years. No evidence of systematic pointing shift is found and the resulting pointing accuracy is consistent with the expectations.
One of the main objectives of the ANTARES telescope is the search for point-like neutrino sources. Both the pointing accuracy and the angular resolution of the detector are important in this context and a reliable way to evaluate this performance is needed. In order to measure the pointing accuracy of the detector, one possibility is to study the shadow of the Moon, i.e. the deficit of the atmospheric muon flux from the direction of the Moon induced by the absorption of cosmic rays. Analysing the data taken between 2007 and 2016, the Moon shadow is observed with $3.5sigma$ statistical significance. The detector angular resolution for downward-going muons is 0.73$^{circ}pm0.14^{circ}.$ The resulting pointing performance is consistent with the expectations. An independent check of the telescope pointing accuracy is realised with the data collected by a shower array detector onboard of a ship temporarily moving around the ANTARES location.
A search for cosmic neutrino sources using the data collected with the ANTARES neutrino telescope between early 2007 and the end of 2015 is performed. For the first time, all neutrino interactions --charged and neutral current interactions of all flavours-- are considered in a search for point-like sources with the ANTARES detector. In previous analyses, only muon neutrino charged current interactions were used. This is achieved by using a novel reconstruction algorithm for shower-like events in addition to the standard muon track reconstruction. The shower channel contributes about 23% of all signal events for an $E^{-2}$ energy spectrum. No significant excess over background is found. The most signal-like cluster of events is located at $(alpha,delta) = (343.8^circ, 23.5^circ)$ with a significance of $1.9sigma$. The neutrino flux sensitivity of the search is about $E^2 dvarPhi/dE = 6cdot10^{-9} GeV cm^{-2} s^{-1}$ for declinations from $-90^circ$ up to $-42^circ$, and below $10^{-8} GeV cm^{-2} s^{-1}$ for declinations up to $5^{circ}$. The directions of 106 source candidates and of 13 muon track events from the IceCube HESE sample are investigated for a possible neutrino signal and upper limits on the signal flux are determined.
The shadowing effect of the Moon and Sun in TeV cosmic rays has been measured with high statistical significance by several experiments. Unlike particles from directions close to the Moon, however, charged particles passing by the neighborhood of the Sun are affected not only by the geomagnetic but also by the solar near- and interplanetary-magnetic field. Since the latter undergoes a well-known 11-year cycle -- during which it can become highly disordered -- the cosmic-ray shadow cast by the Sun as observed on Earth is expected to change over time. We present an update of the analysis of the cosmic-ray Moon and Sun shadows using data taken with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. With a median energy after quality cuts of approximately $50-60,$TeV, depending on the cosmic-ray flux model used, primary cosmic rays inducing events which pass IceCubes Sun shadow filter have a comparatively high energy. While the results for the Moon shadow confirm the stability of the IceCube observatory, the results for the Sun shadow exhibit a clear variation correlating with solar activity and theoretical models of the solar magnetic field.
Addressing the origin of the astrophysical neutrino flux observed by IceCube is of paramount importance. Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are among the few astrophysical sources capable of achieving the required energy to contribute to such neutrino flux through p$gamma$ interactions. In this work, ANTARES data have been used to search for upward going muon neutrinos in spatial and temporal coincidence with 784 GRBs occurred from 2007 to 2017. For each GRB, the expected neutrino flux has been calculated in the framework of the internal shock model and the impact of the lack of knowledge on the majority of source redshifts and on other intrinsic parameters of the emission mechanism has been quantified. It is found that the model parameters that set the radial distance where shock collisions occur have the largest impact on neutrino flux expectations. In particular, the bulk Lorentz factor of the source ejecta and the minimum variability timescale are found to contribute significantly to the GRB-neutrino flux uncertainty. For the selected sources, ANTARES data have been analysed, by maximising the discovery probability of the stacking sample through an extended maximum-likelihood strategy. Since no neutrino event passed the quality cuts set by the optimisation procedure, 90% confidence level upper limits (with their uncertainty) on the total expected diffuse neutrino flux have been derived, according to the model. The GRB contribution to the observed diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux around 100 TeV is constrained to be less than 10%.
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