Document Type

Article

Language

eng

Publication Date

9-11-2017

Publisher

The American Astronomical Society

Source Publication

The Astrophysical Journal

Source ISSN

0004-637X

Abstract

The IceCube neutrino observatory has established the existence of a flux of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos, which is inconsistent with the expectation from atmospheric backgrounds at a significance greater than 5σ. This flux has been observed in analyses of both track events from muon neutrino interactions and cascade events from interactions of all neutrino flavors. Searches for astrophysical neutrino sources have focused on track events due to the significantly better angular resolution of track reconstructions. To date, no such sources have been confirmed. Here we present the first search for astrophysical neutrino sources using cascades interacting in IceCube with deposited energies as small as 1 TeV. No significant clustering was observed in a selection of 263 cascades collected from 2010 May to 2012 May. We show that compared to the classic approach using tracks, this statistically independent search offers improved sensitivity to sources in the southern sky, especially if the emission is spatially extended or follows a soft energy spectrum. This enhancement is due to the low background from atmospheric neutrinos forming cascade events and the additional veto of atmospheric neutrinos at declinations −30°.

Comments

Published version. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 846, No. 136 (September 10, 2017). DOI. © 2017 The American Astronomical Society. Used with permission.

A full list of authors is available in the article text.

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