Search for sub-TeV Neutrino Emission from Novae with IceCube-DeepCore

TL;DR

This study conducted the first search for neutrinos in the GeV to 10 TeV range from novae using IceCube-DeepCore, aiming to detect neutrino emission correlated with gamma-ray and optical signals, but found no evidence of such emission.

Contribution

It introduces the first neutrino search from novae in the GeV-TeV range with IceCube-DeepCore, expanding the scope of neutrino astronomy to these explosive events.

Findings

No neutrino emission detected from the studied novae.

Set upper limits on neutrino flux for gamma-ray detected novae.

Established constraints on hadronic processes in novae.

Abstract

The understanding of novae, the thermonuclear eruptions on the surfaces of white dwarf stars in binaries, has recently undergone a major paradigm shift. Though the bolometric luminosity of novae was long thought to arise directly from photons supplied by the thermonuclear runaway, recent GeV gamma-ray observations have supported the notion that a significant portion of the luminosity could come from radiative shocks. More recently, observations of novae have lent evidence that these shocks are acceleration sites for hadrons for at least some types of novae. In this scenario, a flux of neutrinos may accompany the observed gamma rays. As the gamma rays from most novae have only been observed up to a few GeV, novae have previously not been considered as targets for neutrino telescopes, which are most sensitive at and above TeV energies. Here, we present the first search for neutrinos from novae with energies between a few GeV and 10 TeV using IceCube-DeepCore, a densely instrumented region of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory with a reduced energy threshold. We search both for a correlation between gamma-ray and neutrino emission as well as between optical and neutrino emission from novae. We find no evidence for neutrino emission from the novae considered in this analysis and set upper limits for all gamma-ray detected novae.