Constraints on Minute-Scale Transient Astrophysical Neutrino Sources
Name
PhysRevLett.122.051102.pdf
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308.2 KB
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Author(s)
Aartsen, M. G.
Ackermann, M.
Adams, J.
Aguilar, J. A.
Ahlers, M.
Ahrens, M.
Al Samarai, I.
Altmann, D.
Andeen, K.
Anderson, T.
Date Issued
February 2019
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Aartsen, M. G. et al. "Constraints on Minute-Scale Transient Astrophysical Neutrino Sources." Physical Review Letters 122, 5 (February 2019): 051102 © 2019 American Physical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
High-energy neutrino emission has been predicted for several short-lived astrophysical transients including gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), core-collapse supernovae with choked jets, and neutron star mergers. IceCube’s optical and x-ray follow-up program searches for such transient sources by looking for two or more muon neutrino candidates in directional coincidence and arriving within 100 s. The measured rate of neutrino alerts is consistent with the expected rate of chance coincidences of atmospheric background events and no likely electromagnetic counterparts have been identified in Swift follow-up observations. Here, we calculate generic bounds on the neutrino flux of short-lived transient sources. Assuming an E[superscript -2.5] neutrino spectrum, we find that the neutrino flux of rare sources, like long gamma-ray bursts, is constrained to <5% of the detected astrophysical flux and the energy released in neutrinos (100 GeV to 10 PeV) by a median bright GRB-like source is <10[superscript 52.5] erg. For a harder E[superscript -2.13] neutrino spectrum up to 30% of the flux could be produced by GRBs and the allowed median source energy is <10[superscript 52] erg. A hypothetical population of transient sources has to be more common than 10[superscript -5] Mpc[superscript -3] yr[superscript -1] (5×10[superscript -8] Mpc[superscript -3] yr[superscript -1] for the E[superscript -2.13] spectrum) to account for the complete astrophysical neutrino flux.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory for Nuclear Science
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.051102
