In the past decade IceCube's observations have revealed a flux of astrophysical neutrinos extending to \(10^{7}~\rm{GeV}\). The forthcoming generation of neutrino observatories promises to grant ...further insight into the high-energy neutrino sky, with sensitivity reaching energies up to \(10^{12}~\rm{GeV}\). At such high energies, a new set of effects becomes relevant, which was not accounted for in the last generation of neutrino propagation software. Thus, it is important to develop new simulations which efficiently and accurately model lepton behavior at this scale. We present TauRunner a PYTHON-based package that propagates neutral and charged leptons. TauRunner supports propagation between \(10~\rm{GeV}\) and \(10^{12}~\rm{GeV}\). The package accounts for all relevant secondary neutrinos produced in charged-current tau neutrino interactions. Additionally, tau energy losses of taus produced in neutrino interactions is taken into account, and treated stochastically. Finally, TauRunner is broadly adaptable to divers experimental setups, allowing for user-specified trajectories and propagation media, neutrino cross sections, and initial spectra.
Recent observations of GeV gamma-rays from novae have led to a paradigm shift in the understanding of these objects. While it is now believed that shocks contribute significantly to the energy budget ...of novae, it is still unknown if the emission is hadronic or leptonic in origin. Neutrinos could hold the key to definitively differentiating between these two scenarios, though the energies of such particles would be much lower than are typically targeted with neutrino telescopes. IceCube's densely instrumented DeepCore sub-array provides the ability to reduce the threshold for observation from 1 TeV down to approximately 10 GeV. We will discuss recent measurements in this low energy regime, details of a new sub-TeV selection, and prospects for future searches for transient neutrino emission.
The recent association between IC-170922A and the blazar TXS0506+056 highlights the importance of real-time observations for identifying possible astrophysical neutrino sources. Thanks to its ...near-100\% duty cycle, 4\(\pi\) steradian field of view, and excellent sensitivity over many decades of energy, IceCube is well suited both to generate alerts for follow-up by other instruments and to rapidly follow up alerts generated by other instruments. Detection of neutrinos in coincidence with transient astrophysical phenomena serves as a smoking gun for hadronic processes and supplies essential information about the identities and mechanisms of cosmic-ray accelerators. In 2016, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory established a pipeline to rapidly search for neutrinos from astrophysical transients on timescales ranging from a fraction of a second to multiple weeks. Since then, 67 dedicated analyses have been performed searching for associations between IceCube neutrinos and astrophysical transients reported by radio, optical, X-ray, and gamma-ray instruments in addition to searching for lower energy neutrino signals in association with IceCube's own high-energy alerts. We present the event selection, maximum likelihood analysis method, and sensitivity of the IceCube real-time pipeline. We also summarize the results of all follow-up analyses to date.
Although IceCube has discovered a diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux, the underlying sources of these neutrinos remain unknown. Transient astrophysical objects, such as fast radio bursts (FRBs), ...could explain a large percentage of the measured flux. We present the analysis techniques of IceCube searches for MeV to TeV neutrinos from FRBs. As no significant correlation between IceCube neutrinos and FRBs has been found, we present the first limit on MeV neutrino emission from FRBs and the most constraining limits for neutrinos with GeV to TeV energies. We also describe the prospects for future IceCube neutrino searches coinciding with FRB detections from next generation radio interferometers.
The discoveries of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos by IceCube in 2013 and of gravitational waves by LIGO in 2015 have enabled a new era of multi-messenger astronomy. Gravitational waves can ...identify the merging of compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes. These compact mergers, especially neutron star mergers, are potential neutrino sources. We present an analysis searching for neutrinos from gravitational wave sources reported by the LIGO Virgo Collaboration (LVC). We use a dedicated transient likelihood analysis combining IceCube events with source localizations provided by LVC as spatial priors. We report results for all gravitational wave events from the O1, O2, and O3 observing runs.
We summarize initial results for high-energy neutrino counterpart searches coinciding with gravitational-wave events in LIGO/Virgo's GWTC-2 catalog using IceCube's neutrino triggers. We did not find ...any statistically significant high-energy neutrino counterpart and derived upper limits on the time-integrated neutrino emission on Earth as well as the isotropic equivalent energy emitted in high-energy neutrinos for each event.
Tau neutrinos are unique cosmic messengers, especially at extreme energies. When they undergo a charged-current interaction, the short lifetime of the produced tau gives rise to secondary tau ...neutrinos that carry a significant fraction of the primary neutrino energy. This effect, known as tau neutrino regeneration, has not been applied to its full potential in current generation neutrino experiments. In this work, we present an updated calculation of tau neutrino regeneration, and explore its implications for two scenarios: the recent anomalous ANITA events and the cosmogenic neutrino flux. For the former, we investigate the idea of localized emission and find that the maximum secondary neutrino flux allowed by IceCube measurements implies a primary flux that is incompatible with the ANITA observation, regardless of the assumed source energy spectrum. For the latter, we study the prospect of detecting the cosmogenic neutrino flux of regenerated PeV neutrinos with current and next generation neutrino detectors.
The Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) collaboration has reported a total of three neutrino candidates from the experiment's first three flights. One of these was the lone candidate in a ...search for Askaryan radio emission, and the others can be interpreted as tau-neutrinos, with important caveats. Among a variety of explanations for these events, they may be produced by astrophysical transients with various characteristic timescales. We test the hypothesis that these events are astrophysical in origin by searching for IceCube counterparts. Using seven years of IceCube data from 2011 through 2018, we search for neutrino point sources using integrated, triggered, and untriggered approaches, and account for the substantial uncertainty in the directional reconstruction of the ANITA events. Due to its large livetime and effective area over many orders of magnitude in energy, IceCube is well suited to test the astrophysical origin of the ANITA events.
In eight years of operation, the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) has detected a large sample of cosmic-ray protons. The LAT's wide field of view and full-sky coverage make it an excellent instrument ...for studying anisotropy in the arrival directions of protons at all angular scales. These capabilities enable the LAT to make a full-sky 2D measurement of cosmic-ray proton anisotropy complementary to many recent TeV measurements, which are only sensitive to the right ascension component of the anisotropy. Any detected anisotropy probes the structure of the local interstellar magnetic field or could indicate the presence of a nearby source. We present the first results from the Fermi-LAT Collaboration on the full-sky angular power spectrum of protons from approximately 100 GeV - 10 TeV.
We present a search for neutrinos in coincidence in time and direction with four fast radio bursts (FRBs) detected by the Parkes and Green Bank radio telescopes during the first year of operation of ...the complete IceCube Neutrino Observatory (May 2011 through May 2012). The neutrino sample consists of 138,322 muon neutrino candidate events, which are dominated by atmospheric neutrinos and muons but also contain an astrophysical neutrino component. Considering only neutrinos detected on the same day as each FRB, zero IceCube events were found to be compatible with the FRB directions within the estimated 99\% error radius of the neutrino directions. Based on the non-detection, we present the first upper limits on the neutrino fluence from fast radio bursts.