1. |
- Achterberg, A., et al.
(author)
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Detection of atmospheric muon neutrinos with the IceCube 9-string detector
- 2007
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In: Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology. - 1550-7998. ; 76:2, s. 027101-
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The IceCube neutrino detector is a cubic kilometer TeV to PeV neutrino detector under construction at the geographic South Pole. The dominant population of neutrinos detected in IceCube is due to meson decay in cosmic-ray air showers. These atmospheric neutrinos are relatively well understood and serve as a calibration and verification tool for the new detector. In 2006, the detector was approximately 10% completed, and we report on data acquired from the detector in this configuration. We observe an atmospheric neutrino signal consistent with expectations, demonstrating that the IceCube detector is capable of identifying neutrino events. In the first 137.4 days of live time, 234 neutrino candidates were selected with an expectation of 211 +/- 76.1(syst)+/- 14.5(stat) events from atmospheric neutrinos.
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2. |
- Ackermann, M., et al.
(author)
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Search for ultra-high-energy neutrinos with amanda-II
- 2008
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In: Astrophysical Journal. - 0004-637X .- 1538-4357. ; 675:2, s. 1014-1024
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A search for diffuse neutrinos with energies in excess of 10(5) GeV is conducted with AMANDA-II data recorded between 2000 and 2002. Above 10(7) GeV, the Earth is essentially opaque to neutrinos. This fact, combined with the limited overburden of the AMANDA-II detector ( roughly 1.5 km), concentrates these ultra-high-energy neutrinos at the horizon. The primary background for this analysis is bundles of downgoing, high-energy muons from the interaction of cosmic rays in the atmosphere. No statistically significant excess above the expected background is seen in the data, and an upper limit is set on the diffuse all-flavor neutrino flux of E-2 Phi(90%CL) < 2.7x10(-7) GeV cm(-2) s(-1) sr(-1) valid over the energy range of 2x10(5) to 10(9) GeV. A number of models that predict neutrino fluxes from active galactic nuclei are excluded at the 90% confidence level.
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3. |
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4. |
- Achterberg, A., et al.
(author)
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Multiyear search for a diffuse flux of muon neutrinos with AMANDA-II
- 2007
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In: Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology. - 1550-7998. ; 76:4, s. 042008-
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A search for TeV-PeV muon neutrinos from unresolved sources was performed on AMANDA-II data collected between 2000 and 2003 with an equivalent live time of 807 days. This diffuse analysis sought to find an extraterrestrial neutrino flux from sources with nonthermal components. The signal is expected to have a harder spectrum than the atmospheric muon and neutrino backgrounds. Since no excess of events was seen in the data over the expected background, an upper limit of E-2 Phi(90%C.L.)< 7.4x10(-8) GeV cm(-2) s(-1) sr(-1) is placed on the diffuse flux of muon neutrinos with a Phi proportional to E-2 spectrum in the energy range 16 TeV to 2.5 PeV. This is currently the most sensitive Phi proportional to E-2 diffuse astrophysical neutrino limit. We also set upper limits for astrophysical and prompt neutrino models, all of which have spectra different from Phi proportional to E-2.
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5. |
- Trotta, Roberto, et al.
(author)
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Prospects for dark matter detection with IceCube in the context of the CMSSM
- 2009
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In: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. - : IOP Publishing. - 1475-7516. ; :8, s. 034-
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Research review (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We study in detail the ability of the nominal configuration of the IceCube neutrino telescope (with 80 strings) to probe the parameter space of the Constrained MSSM (CMSSM) favoured by current collider and cosmological data. Adopting conservative assumptions about the galactic halo model and the expected experiment performance, we find that IceCube has a probability between 2% and 12% of achieving a 5σ detection of dark matter annihilation in the Sun, depending on the choice of priors for the scalar and gaugino masses and on the astrophysical assumptions. We identify the most important annihilation channels in the CMSSM parameter space favoured by current constraints, and we demonstrate that assuming that the signal is dominated by a single annihilation channel can lead to large systematic errors in the inferred WIMP annihilation cross section. We demonstrate that ~ 66% of the CMSSM parameter space violates the equilibrium condition between capture and annihilation in the center of the Sun. By cross-correlating our predictions with direct detection methods, we conclude that if IceCube does detect a neutrino flux from the Sun at high significance while direct detection experiments do not find a signal above a spin-independent cross section σpSI 7 × 10−9 pb, the CMSSM will be strongly disfavoured, given standard astrophysical assumptions for the WIMP distribution. This result is robust with respect to a change of priors. We argue that the proposed low-energy DeepCore extension of IceCube will be an ideal instrument to focus on relevant CMSSM areas of parameter space.
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6. |
- Achterberg, A., et al.
(author)
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First Year Performance of the IceCube Neutrino Telescope
- 2006
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In: Astroparticle physics. - : Elsevier BV. - 0927-6505 .- 1873-2852. ; 26:3, s. 155-173
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The first sensors of the IceCube neutrino observatory were deployed at the South Pole during the austral summer of 2004-2005 and have been producing data since February 2005. One string of 60 sensors buried in the ice and a surface array of eight ice Cherenkov tanks took data until December 2005 when deployment of the next set of strings and tanks began. We have analyzed these data, demonstrating that the performance of the system meets or exceeds design requirements. Times are determined across the whole array to a relative precision of better than 3 ns, allowing reconstruction of muon tracks and light bursts in the ice, of air-showers in the surface array and of events seen in coincidence by surface and deep-ice detectors separated by up to 2.5 km.
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7. |
- Achterberg, A., et al.
(author)
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Five years of searches for point sources of astrophysical neutrinos with the AMANDA-II neutrino telescope
- 2007
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In: Physical Review D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology. - 1550-7998. ; 75:10, s. 102001-
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We report the results of a five-year survey of the northern sky to search for point sources of high energy neutrinos. The search was performed on the data collected with the AMANDA-II neutrino telescope in the years 2000 to 2004, with a live time of 1001 days. The sample of selected events consists of 4282 upward going muon tracks with high reconstruction quality and an energy larger than about 100 GeV. We found no indication of point sources of neutrinos and set 90% confidence level flux upper limits for an all-sky search and also for a catalog of 32 selected sources. For the all-sky search, our average (over declination and right ascension) experimentally observed upper limit Phi0=((E/(1 TeV)))gamma·((d Phi)/dE) to a point source flux of muon and tau neutrino (detected as muons arising from taus) is Phinu[sub mu] + [overline nu ][sub mu]0+Phinu[sub tau] + [overline nu ][sub tau]0=11.1× 10-11 TeV-1 cm-2 s-1, in the energy range between 1.6 TeV and 2.5 PeV for a flavor ratio Phinu[sub mu] + [overline nu ][sub mu]0/Phinu[sub tau] + [overline nu ][sub tau]0=1 and assuming a spectral index gamma=2. It should be noticed that this is the first time we set upper limits to the flux of muon and tau neutrinos. In previous papers we provided muon neutrino upper limits only neglecting the sensitivity to a signal from tau neutrinos, which improves the limits by 10% to 16%. The value of the average upper limit presented in this work corresponds to twice the limit on the muon neutrino flux Phinu[sub mu] + [overline nu ][sub mu]0=5.5×10-11 TeV-1 cm-2 s-1. A stacking analysis for preselected active galactic nuclei and a search based on the angular separation of the events were also performed. We report the most stringent flux upper limits to date, including the results of a detailed assessment of systematic uncertainties.
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8. |
- Achterberg, A., et al.
(author)
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Limits on the high-energy gamma and neutrino fluxes from the SGR 1806-20 giant flare of 27 December 2004 with the AMANDA-II detector
- 2006
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In: Physical Review Letters. - 0031-9007 .- 1079-7114. ; 97:22, s. 221101-
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- On 27 December 2004, a giant gamma flare from the Soft Gamma-Ray Repeater 1806-20 saturated many satellite gamma-ray detectors, being the brightest transient event ever observed in the Galaxy. AMANDA-II was used to search for down-going muons indicative of high-energy gammas and/or neutrinos from this object. The data revealed no significant signal, so upper limits (at 90% C.L.) on the normalization constant were set: 0.05(0.5) TeV-1 m(-2) s(-1) for gamma=-1.47 (-2) in the gamma flux and 0.4(6.1) TeV-1 m(-2) s(-1) for gamma=-1.47 (-2) in the high-energy neutrino flux.
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9. |
- Achterberg, A., et al.
(author)
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Limits on the Muon Flux from Neutralino Annihilations at the Center of the Earth with AMANDA
- 2006
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In: Astroparticle physics. - : Elsevier BV. - 0927-6505 .- 1873-2852. ; 26:2, s. 129-139
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A search has been performed for nearly vertically upgoing neutrino-induced muons with the Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA), using data taken over the three year period 1997-99. No excess above the expected atmospheric neutrino background has been found. Upper limits at 90% confidence level have been set on the annihilation rate of neutralinos at the center of the Earth, as well as on the muon flux at AMANDA induced by neutrinos created by the annihilation products.
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10. |
- Achterberg, A., et al.
(author)
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On the selection of AGN neutrino source candidates for a source stacking analysis with neutrino telescopes
- 2006
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In: Astroparticle physics. - : Elsevier BV. - 0927-6505 .- 1873-2852. ; 26:4-5, s. 282-300
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The sensitivity of a search for sources of TeV neutrinos can be improved by grouping potential sources together into generic classes in a procedure that is known as source stacking. In this paper, we define catalogs of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and use them to perform a source stacking analysis. The grouping of AGN into classes is done in two steps: first, AGN classes are defined, then, sources to be stacked are selected assuming that a potential neutrino flux is linearly correlated with the photon luminosity in a certain energy band (radio, IR, optical, keV, GeV, TeV). Lacking any secure detailed knowledge on neutrino production in AGN, this correlation is motivated by hadronic AGN models, as briefly reviewed in this paper.The source stacking search for neutrinos from generic AGN classes is illustrated using the data collected by the AMANDA-II highenergy neutrino detector during the year 2000. No significant excess for any of the suggested groups was found.
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