SEARCHES FOR HIGH-ENERGY NEUTRINO EMISSION IN THE GALAXY WITH THE COMBINED ICECUBE-AMANDA DETECTOR

Journal Article · Sun Jan 20 00:00:00 EST 2013 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/763/1/33· OSTI ID:22167201

Abbasi, R.; Ahlers, M.; Andeen, K.; Auffenberg, J.; Baker, M. ^[1]; Abdou, Y. ^[2]; Ackermann, M. ^[3]; Adams, J. ^[4]; Aguilar, J. A. ^[5]; Altmann, D. ^[6]; Bai, X. ^[7]; Barwick, S. W. ^[8]; Baum, V. ^[9]; Bay, R. ^[10]; Beattie, K. ^[11]; Beatty, J. J. ^[12]; Bechet, S. ^[13]; Becker Tjus, J. ^[14]; Becker, K. -H. ^[15]; Bell, M. ^[16] ; others, and

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1. Department of Physics and Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706 (United States)
2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Gent, B-9000 Gent (Belgium)
3. DESY, D-15735 Zeuthen (Germany)
4. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch (New Zealand)
5. Departement de physique nucleaire et corpusculaire, Universite de Geneve, CH-1211 Geneve (Switzerland)
6. Institut fuer Physik, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, D-12489 Berlin (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. Institute of Physics, University of Mainz, Staudinger Weg 7, D-55099 Mainz (Germany)
10. Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
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)
15. Department of Physics, University of Wuppertal, D-42119 Wuppertal (Germany)
16. Department of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 (United States)

We report on searches for neutrino sources at energies above 200 GeV in the Northern sky of the Galactic plane, using the data collected by the South Pole neutrino telescope, IceCube, and AMANDA. The Galactic region considered in this work includes the local arm toward the Cygnus region and our closest approach to the Perseus Arm. The searches are based on the data collected between 2007 and 2009. During this time AMANDA was an integrated part of IceCube, which was still under construction and operated with 22 strings (2007-2008) and 40 strings (2008-2009) of optical modules deployed in the ice. By combining the advantages of the larger IceCube detector with the lower energy threshold of the more compact AMANDA detector, we obtain an improved sensitivity at energies below {approx}10 TeV with respect to previous searches. The analyses presented here are a scan for point sources within the Galactic plane, a search optimized for multiple and extended sources in the Cygnus region, which might be below the sensitivity of the point source scan, and studies of seven pre-selected neutrino source candidates. For one of them, Cygnus X-3, a time-dependent search for neutrino emission in coincidence with observed radio and X-ray flares has been performed. No evidence of a signal is found, and upper limits are reported for each of the searches. We investigate neutrino spectra proportional to E {sup -2} and E {sup -3} in order to cover the entire range of possible neutrino spectra. The steeply falling E {sup -3} neutrino spectrum can also be used to approximate neutrino energy spectra with energy cutoffs below 50 TeV since these result in a similar energy distribution of events in the detector. For the region of the Galactic plane visible in the Northern sky, the 90% confidence level muon neutrino flux upper limits are in the range E {sup 3} dN/dE {approx} 5.4-19.5 Multiplication-Sign 10{sup -11} TeV{sup 2} cm{sup -2} s{sup -1} for point-like neutrino sources in the energy region [180.0 GeV-20.5 TeV]. These represent the most stringent upper limits for soft-spectra neutrino sources within the Galaxy reported to date.

• OSTI ID: 22167201
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 763, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
APPROXIMATIONS
ASTROPHYSICS
CHERENKOV COUNTERS
COSMIC NEUTRINOS
COSMIC PHOTONS
ENERGY SPECTRA
GEV RANGE
ICE
MILKY WAY
MULTIPARTICLE SPECTROMETERS
MUON NEUTRINOS
NEUTRINO DETECTION
PARTICLE IDENTIFICATION
PHOTON EMISSION
POINT SOURCES
SENSITIVITY
TELESCOPE COUNTERS
TEV RANGE
TIME DEPENDENCE