Multi-messenger programs in ANTARES: Status and prospects Van Elewyck, Véronique
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
01/2011, Volume:
626
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
With an instrumented volume of about 0.015
km
3, ANTARES is currently the largest neutrino telescope operating in the Northern Hemisphere. One of its main goals is the detection of high-energy ...neutrinos from (extra-)galactic astrophysical sources. Such observations would provide important clues about the processes at work in those sources, and possibly help solve the puzzle of ultra-high energy cosmic rays. In this context, ANTARES is developing several on- and off-line programs to improve its capabilities of revealing possible correlations (in space and time) of neutrinos with other cosmic messengers: photons (in different ranges of wavelengths), cosmic rays and gravitational waves.
The search for astrophysical high-energy neutrinos is one of the pillars of multi-messenger astronomy. Neutrino production in extragalactic sources or the cosmic environment is intimately related to ...(and limited by) the observed emission of γ-rays and cosmic rays. We will review the various indirect neutrino limits that arise from this cosmic connection. So far, no high-energy neutrino source could be unambiguously identified. However, the strong limits on TeV to PeV neutrino emission set by this non-observation serve as an indirect constraint of candidate sources of cosmic rays. At the EeV energy scale the diffuse flux of cosmogenic neutrinos associated with the propagation of ultra-high energy cosmic rays in the cosmic radiation background seems to be the most promising candidate for a future detection. We will discuss its model dependence w.r.t. nuclear composition and evolution of the sources and provide simple bolometric scaling relations and lower limits.