TIME-DEPENDENT SEARCHES FOR POINT SOURCES OF NEUTRINOS WITH THE 40-STRING AND 22-STRING CONFIGURATIONS OF ICECUBE

Journal Article · Sun Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 2012 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/744/1/1· OSTI ID:22004359

Abbasi, R; Aguilar, J A; Andeen, K; Baker, M; BenZvi, S ^[1]; Abdou, Y ^[2]; Abu-Zayyad, T ^[3]; Adams, J ^[4]; Ahlers, M ^[5]; Auffenberg, J; Becker, K -H ^[6]; Bai, X ^[7]; Barwick, S W ^[8]; Bay, R ^[9]; Bazo Alba, J L; Benabderrahmane, M L ^[10]; Beattie, K ^[11]; Beatty, J J ^[12]; Bechet, S ^[13]; Becker, J K ^[14] ; others, and

---

1. Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706 (United States)
2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Gent, B-9000 Gent (Belgium)
3. Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, River Falls, WI 54022 (United States)
4. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch (New Zealand)
5. Department of Physics, University of Oxford, 1 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3NP (United Kingdom)
6. Department of Physics, University of Wuppertal, D-42119 Wuppertal (Germany)
7. Bartol Research Institute and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716 (United States)
8. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697 (United States)
9. Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
10. DESY, D-15735 Zeuthen (Germany)
11. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
12. Department of Physics and Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210 (United States)
13. Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Science Faculty CP230, B-1050 Brussels (Belgium)
14. Fakultaet fuer Physik and Astronomie, Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum, D-44780 Bochum (Germany)

This paper presents four 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 with sensitivity to neutrino flares lasting between 20 {mu}s and a year duration from astrophysical sources. Searches that 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 use of additional timing information. Flaring sources considered here, such as active galactic nuclei, soft gamma-ray repeaters, and gamma-ray bursts, are promising candidate neutrino emitters. Two searches are 'untriggered' in the sense that they look for any possible flare in the entire sky and from a predefined catalog of sources from which photon flares have been recorded. The other two searches are triggered by multi-wavelength information on flares from blazars and from a soft gamma-ray repeater. One triggered search uses lightcurves from Fermi-LAT which provides continuous monitoring. A second triggered search uses information where the flux states have been measured only for short periods of time near the flares. The untriggered searches use data taken by 40 strings of IceCube between 2008 April 5 and 2009 May 20. The triggered searches also use data taken by the 22-string configuration of IceCube operating between 2007 May 31 and 2008 April 5. The results from all four searches are compatible with a fluctuation of the background.

• OSTI ID: 22004359
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 744; ISSN ASJOAB; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
ASTROPHYSICS
COSMIC GAMMA BURSTS
COSMIC NEUTRINOS
FLARING
GALAXY NUCLEI
GAMMA RADIATION
MUONS
PHOTONS
POINT SOURCES
TELESCOPES
TIME DEPENDENCE