A Search for IceCube Events in the Direction of ANITA Neutrino Candidates
Name
Aartsen_2020_ApJ_892_53.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.4 MB
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Unknown
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5bfb886fc0295b4557b0cf9790778cde
Author(s)
IceCube Collaboration
Arguelles Delgado, Carlos A
Axani, Spencer Nicholas
Collin, G. H.
Conrad, Janet Marie
Diaz, Alejandro
Moulai, Marjon H.
Date Issued
March 2020
Journal
Astrophysical Journal
Publisher
American Astronomical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2020. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. During the first three flights of the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment, the collaboration detected several neutrino candidates. Two of these candidate events were consistent with an ultra-high-energy upgoing air shower and compatible with a tau neutrino interpretation. A third neutrino candidate event was detected in a search for Askaryan radiation in the Antarctic ice, although it is also consistent with the background expectation. The inferred emergence angle of the first two events is in tension with IceCube and ANITA limits on isotropic cosmogenic neutrino fluxes. Here we test the hypothesis that these events are astrophysical in origin, possibly caused by a point source in the reconstructed direction. Given that any ultra-high-energy tau neutrino flux traversing the Earth should be accompanied by a secondary flux in the TeV-PeV range, we search for these secondary counterparts in 7 yr of IceCube data using three complementary approaches. In the absence of any significant detection, we set upper limits on the neutrino flux from potential point sources. We compare these limits to ANITA's sensitivity in the same direction and show that an astrophysical explanation of these anomalous events under standard model assumptions is severely constrained regardless of source spectrum.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory for Nuclear Science
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ab791d
