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Journal article
Search for steady point-like sources in the astrophysical muon neutrino flux with 8 years of IceCube data
The European physical journal. C, Particles and fields, v 79(3), pp 1-19
2019
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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 approximate to 1 degrees at 1 TeV and improves to approximate to 0.3 degrees 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 approximate to 35% assuming an E-2 spectrum. The sensitivity on the muon-neutrino flux is at a level of E2dN/dE=310-13s-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.
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- Title
- Search for steady point-like sources in the astrophysical muon neutrino flux with 8 years of IceCube data
- Creators
- Maryon Ahrens - Oskar Klein-centrum för kosmopartikelfysik (OKC)Christian Bohm - FysikumKunal Deoskar - Oskar Klein-centrum för kosmopartikelfysik (OKC)Chad Finley - Oskar Klein-centrum för kosmopartikelfysik (OKC)Klas Hultqvist - Oskar Klein-centrum för kosmopartikelfysik (OKC)Erin O'Sullivan - Oskar Klein-centrum för kosmopartikelfysik (OKC)Christian Walck - Oskar Klein-centrum för kosmopartikelfysik (OKC)IceCube Collaboration
- Publication Details
- The European physical journal. C, Particles and fields, v 79(3), pp 1-19
- Publisher
- Springer Nature
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Physics
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000461211800006
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85063006342
- Other Identifier
- 991019168204004721
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Physics, Particles & Fields