All-sky point-source IceCube data: years 2010-2012

Introduction

IceCube has performed several all-sky searches for point-like sources of neutrinos that have been published elsewhere. This data release includes 3 years of track-like neutrino candidates detected by IceCube between June 2010 and May 2013. The selection includes through-going tracks, i.e. muon neutrino candidates that reach the detector from all directions, as well as neutrino track events that start within the instrumented volume

This data release encompasses events included in an earlier data release, including the first year of data from the completed 86-string detector, taken between May 2011 and May 2012, was published here in November 2016. With this data release, the events from this earlier release are included with improved angular error calculations used.

The details of the neutrino candidate events selection used to create this data set can be found in the paper published by the IceCube collaboration in The Astrophysical Journal in 2017.

Data release

Suggested citation for this dataset:

IceCube Collaboration (2018): All-sky point-source IceCube data: years 2010-2012. Dataset. DOI:10.21234/B4F04V

Click here to download (.zip, 11MB)

Included in the download are the following files:

Data files

IC79-2010-events.txt, IC86-2011-events.txt and IC86-2012-events.txt 
Included in these files are all neutrino candidate events (containing: IC79 ~93k events, IC86-2011 ~136k events, IC86-2012 ~105k events). The first file contains data taken the year before IceCube Completion–June 2010-May 2011–when the detector was running with 79 strings of sensors. The other two files are data taken during the two first years of IceCube running with the final full configuration.

In each file, the first column is the time when event was observed given as a modified Julian date (MJD) to ~1ms precision. The second column is the base 10 logarithm of the energy proxy in GeV. The energy proxy roughly scales with the energy deposited in the detector. Although the statistical distribution of this parameter matches what is expected from simulations, for individual events, this energy proxy has large errors that were not studied for the purpose of this analysis (see Discussion of the data set below). The next column is the estimated angular error of each event in degrees (the 1 sigma radial uncertainty of a 2D Gaussian distribution, representing ~39% containment). The next two columns are the reconstructed event arrival direction in right ascension and declination, given in degrees and obtained using the J2000 reference frame. The last two columns are the reconstructed event arrival direction in detector-centered coordinates (azimuth and zenith), given in degrees.

Monte Carlo files

ICcc-yyyy-TabulatedAeff.pdf – Neutrino effective area for each data sample in cos(zenith) and energy. “cc” is 79 or 86, depending on the detector configuration, and yyyy indicates the year.

ICcc-yyyy-TabulatedAeff.txt – Tabulated numbers of each effective area file. “cc” is 79 or 86, depending on the detector configuration, and yyyy indicates the year.

ICcc-yyy y-AngRes.txt – Median angular resolution of E-2 scaled signal events. “cc” is 79 or 86, depending on the detector configuration, and yyyy indicates the year.

AngRes.pdf – Plot of the median angular resolution for the 3 data samples.

Discussion of the data set

This data set was created by IceCube in searches for neutrino point sources and is not intended for use in diffuse astrophysical spectral analyses. The energy proxy and mixed nature of the background events complicate the spectral analysis. The energy proxy is provided to be able to sort events by order of magnitude interest, and no error estimate on individual events is provided.

For any questions about this data release, please write to data@icecube.wisc.edu.