Searches for Point Sources of High Energy Cosmic Neutrino with the ANTARES Telescope

TL;DR

This paper reports on ANTARES telescope's search for astrophysical point sources of high-energy neutrinos, utilizing time-integrated and time-dependent methods, and explores correlations with gamma-ray sources like blazars.

Contribution

It introduces a combined approach of time-integrated and time-dependent searches for neutrino sources, including the first analysis of Fermi blazars with ANTARES data.

Findings

No significant neutrino point sources detected.

Improved sensitivity using time-dependent analysis.

Potential correlation between gamma-ray flares and neutrino flux.

Abstract

The ANTARES observatory is currently the largest neutrino telescope in the Northern Hemisphere. It is well suited to detect high energy neutrinos produced in astrophysical sources as it can observe a full hemisphere of the sky at all the times with a high duty cycle and an angular resolution about 0.4 degrees. Due to its location in the South of France, ANTARES is sensitive to up-going neutrinos from many potential galactic sources in the TeV to PeV energy regime. Results from a time-integrated unbinned method as well as the sensitivity of the detector using 2007-2010 data are presented. Moreover, using a time-dependent search for the transient sources, the background rejection and point-source sensitivity can be drastically improved by selecting a narrow time window around the assumed neutrino production period. The gamma-ray light curves of blazars measured by the LAT instrument on-board the Fermi satellite reveal important time variability information. A strong correlation between the gamma-ray and the neutrino fluxes is expected in a hadronic scenario. First results on the search for ten bright and variable Fermi sources with the 2008 ANTARES data are also presented.