First results of low-energy neutrino follow-ups of Run O4 compact binary mergers with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory

TL;DR

This paper reports on the search for low-energy neutrinos from compact binary mergers detected during LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA's O4 run, constraining neutrino source populations and comparing low- and high-energy search results.

Contribution

It introduces a new low-energy neutrino search method in IceCube for compact binary mergers and provides the first results from the O4 run.

Findings

No significant neutrino excess detected.

Constraints placed on neutrino-emitting source populations.

Complementarity between low- and high-energy neutrino searches.

Abstract

We present the results of searches for astrophysical neutrinos of few GeV energy from compact binary mergers detected during the first months of the fourth observing run of the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA interferometers. We describe our method, based on a selection of $0.5-5$ GeV neutrino events in IceCube, where we search for a statistically significant increase in the number of low-energy candidate events detected around the compact binary merger time. With these results, we constrain neutrino-emitting source populations. Finally, we compare our results with constraints set by neutrino searches at $> 10$ GeV energies and describe the complementarity of these low- and high-energy searches.