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Evidence for Astrophysical Muon Neutrinos from the Northern Sky with IceCube
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Evidence for Astrophysical Muon Neutrinos from the Northern Sky with IceCube

Maryon Ahrens, Christian Bohm, Jonathan P. Dumm, Chad Finley, Samuel Flis, Per Olof Hulth, Klas Hultqvist, Christian Walck, Martin Wolf, Marcel Zoll, …
Physical review letters, v 115(8), pp 081102-081102
2015
PMID: 26340177
url
http://hdl.handle.net/11577/3310502View
Accepted (AM)Open Access (Publisher-Specific) Open
url
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.081102View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

Fysik Naturvetenskap ESI Highly Cited Paper (Incites) Natural Sciences Physical Sciences
Results from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory have recently provided compelling evidence for the existence of a high energy astrophysical neutrino flux utilizing a dominantly Southern Hemisphere data set consisting primarily of nu(e) and nu(tau) charged-current and neutral-current ( cascade) neutrino interactions. In the analysis presented here, a data sample of approximately 35 000 muon neutrinos from the Northern sky is extracted from data taken during 659.5 days of live time recorded between May 2010 and May 2012. While this sample is composed primarily of neutrinos produced by cosmic ray interactions in Earth's atmosphere, the highest energy events are inconsistent with a hypothesis of solely terrestrial origin at 3.7 sigma significance. These neutrinos can, however, be explained by an astrophysical flux per neutrino flavor at a level of Phi(E-nu) = 9.9(-3.4)(+3.9) x 10(-19) GeV-1 cm(-2) sr(-1) s(-1) (E-nu/100 TeV)(-2), consistent with IceCube's Southern-Hemisphere-dominated result. Additionally, a fit for an astrophysical flux with an arbitrary spectral index is performed. We find a spectral index of 2.2(-0.2)(+0.2), which is also in good agreement with the Southern Hemisphere result.

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Physics, Multidisciplinary
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