Introduction
IceCube has performed several searches for point-like sources of neutrinos. The events contained in this release make up the sample used in IceCube’s 10-year time-integrated neutrino point source search [1]. Events in the sample are track-like neutrino candidates detected by IceCube between April 2008 and July 2008.
The data contained in this release of IceCube’s point source sample shows 3.3σ evidence of a cumulative excess of events from a catalogue of 110 potential sources, primarily driven by four sources (NGC 1068, TXS 0506+056, PKS 1424+240, and GB6 J1542+6129). NGC 1068 gives the largest excess and appears in spatial coincidence with the hottest spot in the full Northern sky search [1].
IceCube’s 10-year neutrino point source event sample includes updated processing for events between April 2012 and May 2015, leading to differences in significances of some sources, including TXS 0506+056. For more information, please refer to [2].
This release contains data beginning in 2008 (IC40) until the spring of 2018 (IC86-VII). In order to standardize the release format of IceCube’s point source candidate events, this release duplicates and supplants previously released data from 2012 and earlier. Events from this release cannot be combined with other IceCube public data releases.
Data release
Suggested citation for this dataset:
IceCube Collaboration (2021): All-sky point-source IceCube data: years 2008-2018. Dataset. DOI: http://doi.org/DOI:10.21234/sxvs-mt83
Click here to download (.zip, 35 MB)
Included in the download are the following files:
Data files
- Read Me: A file describing each field of the data, uptime, and tabulated response files.
- The “events” subfolder contains the events observed in the 10-year sample of IceCube’s point source neutrino selection. Each file corresponds to a single season of IceCube data taking, including roughly one year of data. For each event, reconstructed particle information is included.
- In order to properly account for detector uptime, IceCube maintains “good run lists,” These contain information about “good runs,” periods of data taking useful for analysis. Data may be marked unusable for various reasons, including major construction or upgrade work, calibration runs, or other anomalies. The “uptime” subfolder contains lists of the good runs for each season.
- In order to best model the response of the IceCube detector to a given signal, Monte Carlo simulations are produced for each detector configuration. Events are sampled from these simulations to model the response of point sources from an arbitrary source and spectrum. We provide both tabulated effective areas and smearing matrices (covering reconstructed energy, direction, and angular uncertainty) in the “irfs” subfolder for each season.
Notes
- This data set was created by IceCube in searches for neutrino point sources and is not intended for use in diffuse astrophysical spectral analyses.
- For any questions about this data release, please write to data@icecube.wisc.edu
References
- [1] Time-integrated Neutrino Source Searches with 10 years of IceCube Data, Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 051103 (2020)
- [2] IceCube Data for Neutrino Point-Source Searches: Years 2008-2018, https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.09836