IceCube search for neutrinos coincident with gravitational wave events from LIGO/Virgo run O3

TL;DR

This study used IceCube data to search for high-energy neutrinos coincident with gravitational wave events from LIGO/Virgo's third run, finding no significant signals but setting upper limits on neutrino emission.

Contribution

First comprehensive search for high-energy neutrinos coincident with GW events during LIGO/Virgo O3, using multiple analysis methods and extended timescales.

Findings

No significant neutrino detections associated with GW events.

Upper limits established on neutrino flux and energy emission.

Extended searches on neutron star mergers and optical counterparts.

Abstract

Using data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, we searched for high-energy neutrino emission from the gravitational-wave events detected by advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors during their third observing run. We did a low-latency follow-up on the public candidate events released during the detectors' third observing run and an archival search on the 80 confident events reported in GWTC-2.1 and GWTC-3 catalogs. An extended search was also conducted for neutrino emission on longer timescales from neutron star containing mergers. Follow-up searches on the candidate optical counterpart of GW190521 were also conducted. We used two methods; an unbinned maximum likelihood analysis and a Bayesian analysis using astrophysical priors, both of which were previously used to search for high-energy neutrino emission from gravitational-wave events. No significant neutrino emission was observed by any analysis and upper limits were placed on the time-integrated neutrino flux as well as the total isotropic equivalent energy emitted in high-energy neutrinos.