Probing neutrino emission at GeV energies from compact binary mergers with IceCube

TL;DR

This paper reports the first search for GeV neutrinos from compact binary mergers using IceCube, lowering the energy threshold to improve detection prospects and complement high-energy neutrino searches.

Contribution

Introduces a novel low-energy threshold method in IceCube for detecting GeV neutrinos from binary mergers, enhancing multi-messenger astronomy capabilities.

Findings

No significant neutrino signals detected from mergers.

Sets new constraints on neutrino emission models at GeV energies.

Demonstrates the complementarity of low and high-energy neutrino searches.

Abstract

The advent of Multi-Messenger Astronomy has allowed for new types of source searches within the neutrino community. We present the results of the first search for GeV astrophysical neutrinos emitted from Compact Binary Mergers, i.e. binary black hole or binary neutron star mergers, detected by the LIGO and Virgo interferometers. We introduce a new approach that lowers the energy threshold of IceCube from roughly 10 GeV to <1 GeV. This method uses an innovative event selection of GeV neutrino events in IceCube and searches for a statistically significant increase in the amount of GeV-like events detected around the Compact Binary Merger time. We compare our results with constraints set by high-energy neutrino searches, and describe the complementarity of these low and high-energy searches.