Searches for neutrinos from cosmic-ray interactions in the Sun using seven years of IceCube data
Name
1912.13135.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
1.67 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
32a6a2832f71f52b7f958d3bcd04a9aa
Author(s)
Conrad, Janet
Date Issued
2021
Journal
Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Citation
Conrad, Janet. 2021. "Searches for neutrinos from cosmic-ray interactions in the Sun using seven years of IceCube data." Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2021 (02).
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Cosmic-ray interactions with the solar atmosphere are expected to produce particle showers which in turn produce neutrinos from weak decays of mesons. These solar atmospheric neutrinos (SAνs) have never been observed experimentally. A detection would be an important step in understanding cosmic-ray propagation in the inner solar system and the dynamics of solar magnetic fields. SAνs also represent an irreducible background to solar dark matter searches and a detection would allow precise characterization of this background. Here, we present the first experimental search based on seven years of data collected from May 2010 to May 2017 in the austral winter with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. An unbinned likelihood analysis is performed for events reconstructed within 5 degrees of the center of the Sun. No evidence for a SAν flux is observed. After inclusion of systematic uncertainties, we set a 90% upper limit of 1.02+0.20-0.18·10-13 GeV-1cm-2s-1 at 1 TeV.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2021/02/025
