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 \[\sim 1^\circ \] at 1 TeV and improves to \[\sim 0.3^\circ \] 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 \[\sim 35\%\] assuming an \[E^{-2}\] spectrum. The sensitivity on the muon-neutrino flux is at a level of \[E^2 \mathrm {d} N /\mathrm {d} E = 3\cdot 10^{-13}\,\mathrm {TeV}\,\mathrm {cm}^{-2}\,\mathrm {s}^{-1}\]. 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.

Details

Title
Search for steady point-like sources in the astrophysical muon neutrino flux with 8 years of IceCube data
Author
Aartsen, M G 1 ; Ackermann, M 2 ; Adams, J 1 ; Aguilar, J A 3 ; Ahlers, M 4 ; Ahrens, M 5 ; Altmann, D 6 ; Andeen, K 7 ; Anderson, T 8 ; Ansseau, I 3 ; Anton, G 6 ; Argüelles, C 9 ; Auffenberg, J 10 ; Axani, S 9 ; Backes, P 10 ; Bagherpour, H 1 ; Bai, X 11 ; Barbano, A 12 ; Barron, J P 13 ; Barwick, S W 14 ; Baum, V 15 ; Bay, R 16 ; Beatty, J J 17 ; J Becker Tjus 18 ; K-H Becker 19 ; BenZvi, S 20 ; Berley, D 21 ; Bernardini, E 2 ; Besson, D Z 22 ; Binder, G 23 ; Bindig, D 19 ; Blaufuss, E 21 ; Blot, S 2 ; Bohm, C 5 ; Börner, M 24 ; Bos, F 18 ; Böser, S 15 ; Botner, O 25 ; Bourbeau, E 4 ; Bourbeau, J 26 ; Bradascio, F 2 ; Braun, J 26 ; H-P Bretz 2 ; Bron, S 12 ; Brostean-Kaiser, J 2 ; Burgman, A 25 ; Busse, R S 26 ; Carver, T 12 ; Chen, C 27 ; Cheung, E 21 ; Chirkin, D 26 ; Clark, K 28 ; Classen, L 29 ; Collin, G H 9 ; Conrad, J M 9 ; Coppin, P 30 ; Correa, P 30 ; Cowen, D F 31 ; Cross, R 20 ; Dave, P 27 ; Day, M 26 ; J P A M de André 32 ; De Clercq, C 30 ; DeLaunay, J J 8 ; Dembinski, H 33 ; 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 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand 
 DESY, Zeuthen, Germany 
 Science Faculty CP230, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium 
 Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark 
 Department of Physics, Oskar Klein Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden 
 Erlangen Centre for Astroparticle Physics, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany 
 Department of Physics, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, USA 
 Department of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA 
 Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA 
10  III. Physikalisches Institut, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany 
11  Physics Department, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, SD, USA 
12  Département de Physique Nucléaire et Corpusculaire, Université de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland 
13  Department of Physics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada 
14  Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA 
15  Institute of Physics, University of Mainz, Mainz, Germany 
16  Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA 
17  Department of Physics and Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA; Department of Astronomy, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA 
18  Fakultät für Physik & Astronomie, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany 
19  Department of Physics, University of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany 
20  Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA 
21  Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA 
22  Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA 
23  Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA 
24  Department of Physics, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany 
25  Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden 
26  Department of Physics and Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA 
27  School of Physics and Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA 
28  SNOLAB, Lively, ON, Canada 
29  Institut für Kernphysik, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Münster, Germany 
30  Dienst ELEM, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Brussels, Belgium 
31  Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA; Department of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA 
32  Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA 
33  Department of Physics and Astronomy, Bartol Research Institute, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA 
34  Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Gent, Gent, Belgium 
35  Institut für Physik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany 
36  Department of Physics, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Korea 
37  Department of Physics, Southern University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA 
38  Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA 
39  Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA 
40  Physik-Department, Technische Universität München, Garching, Germany 
41  Department of Physics, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia 
42  Department of Physics and Institute for Global Prominent Research, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan 
43  CTSPS, Clark-Atlanta University, Atlanta, GA, USA 
44  Department of Physics, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, USA 
45  Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA 
46  Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA 
47  Institut für Physik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany; DESY, Zeuthen, Germany 
48  Department of Physics, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA 
49  Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, River Falls, WI, USA 
50  Department of Physics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA 
51  Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alaska Anchorage, Anchorage, AK, USA 
52  Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark; Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK 
53  Department of Physics and Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA 
54  Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA 
Pages
1-19
Publication year
2019
Publication date
Mar 2019
Publisher
Springer Nature B.V.
ISSN
14346044
e-ISSN
14346052
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2190913955
Copyright
The European Physical Journal C is a copyright of Springer, (2019). All Rights Reserved., © 2019. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.