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- Abbasi, R., et al.
(author)
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Measurement of atmospheric neutrino mixing with improved IceCube DeepCore calibration and data processing
- 2023
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In: Physical Review D. - 2470-0010 .- 2470-0029. ; 108:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We describe a new data sample of IceCube DeepCore and report on the latest measurement of atmospheric neutrino oscillations obtained with data recorded between 2011-2019. The sample includes significant improvements in data calibration, detector simulation, and data processing, and the analysis benefits from a sophisticated treatment of systematic uncertainties, with significantly greater level of detail since our last study. By measuring the relative fluxes of neutrino flavors as a function of their reconstructed energies and arrival directions we constrain the atmospheric neutrino mixing parameters to be sin2θ23=0.51±0.05 and Δm322=2.41±0.07×10-3 eV2, assuming a normal mass ordering. The errors include both statistical and systematic uncertainties. The resulting 40% reduction in the error of both parameters with respect to our previous result makes this the most precise measurement of oscillation parameters using atmospheric neutrinos. Our results are also compatible and complementary to those obtained using neutrino beams from accelerators, which are obtained at lower neutrino energies and are subject to different sources of uncertainties.
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- Abbasi, R., et al.
(author)
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Observation of seasonal variations of the flux of high-energy atmospheric neutrinos with IceCube
- 2023
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In: European Physical Journal C. - : Springer. - 1434-6044 .- 1434-6052. ; 83:9
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Atmospheric muon neutrinos are produced by meson decays in cosmic-ray-induced air showers. The flux depends on meteorological quantities such as the air temperature, which affects the density of air. Competition between decay and re-interaction of those mesons in the first particle production generations gives rise to a higher neutrino flux when the air density in the stratosphere is lower, corresponding to a higher temperature. A measurement of a temperature dependence of the atmospheric νμ flux provides a novel method for constraining hadronic interaction models of air showers. It is particularly sensitive to the production of kaons. Studying this temperature dependence for the first time requires a large sample of high-energy neutrinos as well as a detailed understanding of atmospheric properties. We report the significant (>10σ) observation of a correlation between the rate of more than 260,000 neutrinos, detected by IceCube between 2012 and 2018, and atmospheric temperatures of the stratosphere, measured by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA’s AQUA satellite. For the observed 10 % seasonal change of effective atmospheric temperature we measure a 3.5(3) % change in the muon neutrino flux. This observed correlation deviates by about 2-3 standard deviations from the expected correlation of 4.3 % as obtained from theoretical predictions under the assumption of various hadronic interaction models.
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- Abbasi, R., et al.
(author)
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Search for Galactic Core-collapse Supernovae in a Decade of Data Taken with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory
- 2024
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In: Astrophysical Journal. - : Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP). - 1538-4357 .- 0004-637X. ; 961:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has been continuously taking data to search for O(0.5–10) s long neutrino bursts since 2007. Even if a Galactic core-collapse supernova is optically obscured or collapses to a black hole instead of exploding, it will be detectable via the O(10) MeV neutrino burst emitted during the collapse. We discuss a search for such events covering the time between 2008 April 17 and 2019 December 31. Considering the average data taking and analysis uptime of 91.7% after all selection cuts, this is equivalent to 10.735 yr of continuous data taking. In order to test the most conservative neutrino production scenario, the selection cuts were optimized for a model based on an 8.8 solar mass progenitor collapsing to an O–Ne–Mg core. Conservative assumptions on the effects of neutrino oscillations in the exploding star were made. The final selection cut was set to ensure that the probability to detect such a supernova within the Milky Way exceeds 99%. No such neutrino burst was found in the data after performing a blind analysis. Hence, a 90% C.L. upper limit on the rate of core-collapse supernovae out to distances of ≈25 kpc was determined to be 0.23 yr−1. For the more distant Magellanic Clouds, only high neutrino luminosity supernovae will be detectable by IceCube, unless external information on the burst time is available. We determined a model-independent limit by parameterizing the dependence on the neutrino luminosity and the energy spectrum.
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- Abbasi, R., et al.
(author)
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Search for neutrino lines from dark matter annihilation and decay with IceCube
- 2023
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In: Physical Review D. - : American Physical Society. - 2470-0010 .- 2470-0029. ; 108:10
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Dark matter particles in the Galactic Center and halo can annihilate or decay into a pair of neutrinos producing a monochromatic flux of neutrinos. The spectral feature of this signal is unique and it is not expected from any astrophysical production mechanism. Its observation would constitute a dark matter smoking gun signal. We performed the first dedicated search with a neutrino telescope for such signal, by looking at both the angular and energy information of the neutrino events. To this end, a total of five years of IceCube's DeepCore data has been used to test dark matter masses ranging from 10 GeV to 40 TeV. No significant neutrino excess was found and upper limits on the annihilation cross section, as well as lower limits on the dark matter lifetime, were set. The limits reached are of the order of 10-24 cm3/s for an annihilation and up to 1027 s for decaying dark matter. Using the same data sample we also derive limits for dark matter annihilation or decay into a pair of Standard Model charged particles.
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- Abbasi, R., et al.
(author)
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Characterization of the astrophysical diffuse neutrino flux using starting track events in IceCube
- 2024
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In: Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology. - 2470-0010 .- 2470-0029. ; 110:2
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A measurement of the diffuse astrophysical neutrino spectrum is presented using IceCube data collected from 2011-2022 (10.3 years). We developed novel detection techniques to search for events with a contained vertex and exiting track induced by muon neutrinos undergoing a charged-current interaction. Searching for these starting track events allows us to not only more effectively reject atmospheric muons but also atmospheric neutrino backgrounds in the southern sky, opening a new window to the sub-100 TeV astrophysical neutrino sky. The event selection is constructed using a dynamic starting track veto and machine learning algorithms. We use this data to measure the astrophysical diffuse flux as a single power law flux (SPL) with a best-fit spectral index of γ=2.58-0.09+0.10 and per-flavor normalization of φper-flavorAstro=1.68-0.22+0.19×10-18×GeV-1 cm-2 s-1 sr-1 (at 100 TeV). The sensitive energy range for this dataset is 3-550 TeV under the SPL assumption. This data was also used to measure the flux under a broken power law, however we did not find any evidence of a low energy cutoff.
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- Abbasi, R., et al.
(author)
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Citizen science for IceCube: Name that Neutrino
- 2024
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In: European Physical Journal Plus. - 2190-5444. ; 139:6
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Name that Neutrino is a citizen science project where volunteers aid in classification of events for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, an immense particle detector at the geographic South Pole. From March 2023 to September 2023, volunteers did classifications of videos produced from simulated data of both neutrino signal and background interactions. Name that Neutrino obtained more than 128,000 classifications by over 1800 registered volunteers that were compared to results obtained by a deep neural network machine-learning algorithm. Possible improvements for both Name that Neutrino and the deep neural network are discussed.
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- Abbasi, R., et al.
(author)
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IceCat-1: The IceCube Event Catalog of Alert Tracks
- 2023
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In: Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series. - : IOP Publishing Ltd. - 1538-4365 .- 0067-0049. ; 269:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We present a catalog of likely astrophysical neutrino track-like events from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. IceCube began reporting likely astrophysical neutrinos in 2016, and this system was updated in 2019. The catalog presented here includes events that were reported in real time since 2019, as well as events identified in archival data samples starting from 2011. We report 275 neutrino events from two selection channels as the first entries in the catalog, the IceCube Event Catalog of Alert Tracks, which will see ongoing extensions with additional alerts. The Gold and Bronze alert channels respectively provide neutrino candidates with a 50% and 30% probability of being astrophysical, on average assuming an astrophysical neutrino power-law energy spectral index of 2.19. For each neutrino alert, we provide the reconstructed energy, direction, false-alarm rate, probability of being astrophysical in origin, and likelihood contours describing the spatial uncertainty in the alert's reconstructed location. We also investigate a directional correlation of these neutrino events with gamma-ray and X-ray catalogs, including 4FGL, 3HWC, TeVCat, and Swift-BAT.
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9. |
- Abbasi, R., et al.
(author)
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Improved modeling of in-ice particle showers for IceCube event reconstruction
- 2024
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In: Journal of Instrumentation. - 1748-0221. ; 19:6
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The IceCube Neutrino Observatory relies on an array of photomultiplier tubes to detect Cherenkov light produced by charged particles in the South Pole ice. IceCube data analyses depend on an in-depth characterization of the glacial ice, and on novel approaches in event reconstruction that utilize fast approximations of photoelectron yields. Here, a more accurate model is derived for event reconstruction that better captures our current knowledge of ice optical properties. When evaluated on a Monte Carlo simulation set, the median angular resolution for in-ice particle showers improves by over a factor of three compared to a reconstruction based on a simplified model of the ice. The most substantial improvement is obtained when including effects of birefringence due to the polycrystalline structure of the ice. When evaluated on data classified as particle showers in the high-energy starting events sample, a significantly improved description of the events is observed.
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10. |
- Abbasi, R., et al.
(author)
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Search for 10-1000 GeV Neutrinos from Gamma-Ray Bursts with IceCube
- 2024
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In: Astrophysical Journal. - : Institute of Physics (IOP). - 1538-4357 .- 0004-637X. ; 964:2
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We present the results of a search for 10-1000 GeV neutrinos from 2268 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) over 8 yr of IceCube-DeepCore data. This work probes burst physics below the photosphere where electromagnetic radiation cannot escape. Neutrinos of tens of giga electronvolts are predicted in sub-photospheric collision of free-streaming neutrons with bulk-jet protons. In a first analysis, we searched for the most significant neutrino-GRB coincidence using six overlapping time windows centered on the prompt phase of each GRB. In a second analysis, we conducted a search for a group of GRBs, each individually too weak to be detectable, but potentially significant when combined. No evidence of neutrino emission is found for either analysis. The most significant neutrino coincidence is for Fermi-GBM GRB bn 140807500, with a p-value of 0.097 corrected for all trials. The binomial test used to search for a group of GRBs had a p-value of 0.65 after all trial corrections. The binomial test found a group consisting only of GRB bn 140807500 and no additional GRBs. The neutrino limits of this work complement those obtained by IceCube at tera electronvolt to peta electronvolt energies. We compare our findings for the large set of GRBs as well as GRB 221009A to the sub-photospheric neutron-proton collision model and find that GRB 221009A provides the most constraining limit on baryon loading. For a jet Lorentz factor of 300 (800), the baryon loading on GRB 221009A is lower than 3.85 (2.13) at a 90% confidence level.
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