Search for high-energy neutrino sources from the direction of IceCube alert events

TL;DR

This study searches for astrophysical neutrino sources using high-energy neutrino data from IceCube, employing a time-dependent analysis to identify potential cosmic neutrino production sites with preliminary sensitivity estimates.

Contribution

It introduces a novel time-dependent analysis method for IceCube neutrino data to identify astrophysical sources, using expectation maximization to estimate fluences.

Findings

Detection of approximately 8 high-energy neutrino events per year.

Preliminary 3σ discovery potential fluences of about 0.027 GeV/cm².

Development of a fluence estimation method using expectation maximization.

Abstract

We use IceCube's high-statistics, neutrino-induced, through-going muon samples to search for astrophysical neutrino sources. Specifically, we analyze the arrival directions of IceCube's highest energy neutrinos. These high-energy events allow for a good angular reconstruction of their origin. Additionally, they have a high probability to come from an astrophysical source. On average, 8 neutrino events that satisfy these selection criteria are detected per year. Using these neutrino events as a source catalog, we present a search for the production sites of cosmic neutrinos. In this contribution we explore a time-dependent analysis, and present preliminary 3$\sigma$ discovery potential fluences of $\approx 2.7 \cdot 10^{-2} \rm{GeV}/\rm{cm}^2$. We construct the fluences using expectation maximization.