Searching for high-energy neutrinos in coincidence with gravitational waves with the ANTARES and VIRGO/LIGO detectors

TL;DR

This paper explores the combined use of ANTARES, LIGO, and VIRGO detectors to identify cosmic events that emit both gravitational waves and high-energy neutrinos, potentially revealing hidden astrophysical sources.

Contribution

It introduces a methodology for joint analysis of GW and HEN data, enhancing the detection of common astrophysical sources beyond traditional single-messenger approaches.

Findings

Demonstrates the feasibility of coincident GW and HEN detection

Provides a framework for combined data analysis from multiple detectors

Highlights potential to discover new astrophysical phenomena

Abstract

Cataclysmic cosmic events can be plausible sources of both gravitational waves (GW) and high-energy neutrinos (HEN). Both GW and HEN are alternative cosmic messengers that may escape very dense media and travel unaffected over cosmological distances, carrying information from the innermost regions of the astrophysical engines. For the same reasons, such messengers could also reveal new, hidden sources that were not observed by conventional photon astronomy. Requiring the consistency between GW and HEN detection channels shall enable new searches as one has significant additional information about the common source. A neutrino telescope such as ANTARES can determine accurately the time and direction of high energy neutrino events, while a network of gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO and VIRGO can also provide timing/directional information for gravitational wave bursts. By combining the information from these totally independent detectors, one can search for cosmic events that may arrive from common astrophysical sources.