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Every Flare, Everywhere: An All-Sky Untriggered Search for Astrophysical Neutrino Transients Using IceCube Data

Abstract:

IceCube is a cubic-kilometer sized neutrino telescope embedded in the Antarctic ice and optimized for detection of high-energy neutrinos above∼ 100 GeV. It consists of 86 in-ice strings equipped with 5,160 optical sensors designed to collect Cherenkov light at a depth of 1450 m to 2450 m. In the past years IceCube has carried out a successful campaign in the search for high-energy astrophysical neutrinos, with the discovery of a diffuse flux [1] and hints of astrophysical sources [2, 3]. Previous results from the IceCube collaboration [2, 4] indicate the potential for temporally clustered neutrino emission. While [2] makes use of a method that only fits the largest neutrino flare at a particular candidate location, extensions of this method to include information from multiple flare fits can improve the sensitivity of a temporal clustering analysis to smaller flares, provided that source candidates flare multiple times [5]. The need for a multiple flare fit is also motivated by the increasing duration of the IceCube data available for analysis. By applying these methods to every point in the sky, we can search for an excess of spatial and temporal clustering in the data. In these proceedings, we show the results of applying two variants of a" multi-flare" analysis framework to neutrino data spanning the entire sky. The first variant (a" high-statistics" approach) makes use of all possible flare fits, including those with low local significance, while the second variant (a" high-purity" approach) imposes tighter cuts to select for only the most promising flare candidates. The dataset used for these analyses comprises 10 years of IceCube data [6](from April 6, 2008 to July 10, 2018 …