Today the IceCube Collaboration has presented a search for tau neutrinos at energies above 214 TeV that, although it did not find any events, allowed setting upper limits on the astrophysical tau neutrino flux. This search sets limits on tau neutrinos at energies three orders of magnitude lower than the energies reached by previous dedicated tau neutrino searches. And more importantly, the results now submitted to Physical Review D also prove that tau neutrino searches in IceCube are reaching the sensitivity for a potential discovery. […]
Research
Search for transient astrophysical neutrino emission using GeV muon neutrinos in IceCube
In a paper submitted today to the Astrophysical Journal, the IceCube Collaboration presents results of a search for astrophysical sources of transient neutrino emission using a sample of low-energy—30 to 300 GeV—muon neutrino events from DeepCore. Although no source is singled out, the study sets limits on soft-spectra models, such as energetic or nearby choked GRBs. […]
Our summer research experience working on PINGU with researchers at Universität Mainz
The “IRES: U.S.-European International Research Experience-Particle Astrophysics for Undergraduates” program, funded by NSF and led by the University of Wisconsin–River Falls, brought us to Johannes Gutenburg University in Mainz, Germany, this summer to work with Professor Lutz Köpke and Professor Sebastian Böser. […]
IceCube summer research experience with scientists at Ruhr Universität Bochum
International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) is a program funded by the National Science Foundation to support active participation of US undergraduates in international research projects. Laura Lusardi from New Richmond, WI, and Kelsey Kolell from Fond du Lac, WI, participated in the IRES program through UW–River Falls to work on IceCube research for the summer.
We are both third-year undergraduate students, studying physics at the University of Wisconsin–River Falls. This summer, we had the wonderful opportunity to travel to Germany through IRES to work with IceCube researchers. Even though we both ended up attending the same university, we took wildly different paths to get here. […]
Exploring new directions with DM-Ice and IceCube coincident events
When I came to Yale three years ago, I did not expect to major in physics. Yet, after taking my first class in the subject, it was not long before its fundamental nature and incredible universality had reeled me in for good. Since then, I have sought out opportunities to explore the field and learn what it really means to be a physicist. I joined Assistant Professor Reina Maruyama’s lab this past January and a few months later found myself working on DM-Ice and IceCube. Now, as I gear up for my final year of college, I am spending my summer on campus, conducting research on coincident muon events between the enormous IceCube (1 cubic km) and comparatively miniature (2,309 cubic cm) DM-Ice17 detectors. […]
IceCube confirms the astrophysical nature of high-energy neutrinos with an independent search in the Northern Hemisphere
Today, the IceCube Collaboration announces a new observation of high-energy neutrinos that originated beyond our solar system. This study, which looked for neutrinos coming from the Northern Hemisphere, confirms their cosmic origin as well as the presence of extragalactic neutrinos and the intensity of the neutrino rate. The first evidence for astrophysical neutrinos was announced by the collaboration in November 2013. The results published now in ”Physical Review Letters” are the first independent confirmation of this discovery. […]
AMON, the Astrophysical Multimessenger Observatory Network
The Astrophysical Multimessenger Observatory Network (AMON) will link existing and future high-energy astrophysical observatories into a single virtual system, enabling near real-time coincidence searches for multimessenger astrophysical transients and their electromagnetic counterparts and providing alerts to follow-up observatories. […]
A combined analysis of the astrophysical neutrino flux in IceCube
The IceCube Collaboration is now revisiting these results in a combined analysis accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. The analysis is based on the results of six individual studies and uses up to three observables—energy, zenith angle and event topology—to derive improved constraints on the energy spectrum and the composition of neutrino flavors of the astrophysical neutrino flux. […]
What the atmospheric muon flux in IceCube can tell us about cosmic rays, or even about particle interactions
In a new study presented a few days ago, the IceCube Collaboration reports the potential of atmospheric muons detected in IceCube to help our understanding of important properties of cosmic rays in a wide range of energies. These muons are also shown to be useful for investigating systematic uncertainties in neutrino studies in IceCube. Measurements of the composition of primary cosmic rays, the high-energy spectrum of muons, and the prompt flux are three of the highlights of this paper, which was submitted last Friday to Astroparticle Physics. […]
An IceCube neutrino alert triggers the discovery of a supernova
On March 30, 2012, IceCube detected two high-energy neutrino events. IceCube immediately sent an alert to several optical and X-ray telescopes—the Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE), the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) and the Swift satellite—and a core-collapse supernova was discovered in the PTF images. However, physicists have shown that this was a coincidental discovery and that this supernova is not likely to be the source of the neutrinos in IceCube. These results have been submitted today to the Astrophysical Journal and are the outcome of a joint study between the IceCube Collaboration and members of the PTF Collaboration, the Swift Collaboration and the Pan-STARRS1 Science Consortium. […]