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- Title
Search for steady point-like sources in the astrophysical muon neutrino flux with 8 years of IceCube data.
- Authors
Aartsen, M. G.; Ackermann, M.; Adams, J.; Aguilar, J. A.; Ahlers, M.; Ahrens, M.; Altmann, D.; Andeen, K.; Anderson, T.; Ansseau, I.; Anton, G.; Argüelles, C.; Auffenberg, J.; Axani, S.; Backes, P.; Bagherpour, H.; Bai, X.; Barbano, A.; Barron, J. P.; Barwick, S. W.
- Abstract
The IceCube Collaboration has observed a high-energy astrophysical neutrino flux and recently found evidence for neutrino emission from the blazar TXS 0506 + 056. These results open a new window into the high-energy universe. However, the source or sources of most of the observed flux of astrophysical neutrinos remains uncertain. Here, a search for steady point-like neutrino sources is performed using an unbinned likelihood analysis. The method searches for a spatial accumulation of muon-neutrino events using the very high-statistics sample of about 497,000 neutrinos recorded by IceCube between 2009 and 2017. The median angular resolution is ∼ 1 ∘ at 1 TeV and improves to ∼ 0. 3 ∘ for neutrinos with an energy of 1 PeV. Compared to previous analyses, this search is optimized for point-like neutrino emission with the same flux-characteristics as the observed astrophysical muon-neutrino flux and introduces an improved event-reconstruction and parametrization of the background. The result is an improvement in sensitivity to the muon-neutrino flux compared to the previous analysis of ∼ 35 % assuming an E - 2 spectrum. The sensitivity on the muon-neutrino flux is at a level of E 2 d N / d E = 3 · 10 - 13 TeV cm - 2 s - 1 . No new evidence for neutrino sources is found in a full sky scan and in an a priori candidate source list that is motivated by gamma-ray observations. Furthermore, no significant excesses above background are found from populations of sub-threshold sources. The implications of the non-observation for potential source classes are discussed.
- Subjects
MUONS; FLUX (Energy); NEUTRINOS; INDUSTRIAL procurement; UNIVERSE
- Publication
European Physical Journal C -- Particles & Fields, 2019, Vol 79, Issue 3, pN.PAG
- ISSN
1434-6044
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1140/epjc/s10052-019-6680-0