Chasing Serendipity: Tackling Transient Sources with Neutrino Telescopes

TL;DR

This paper explores how transient astrophysical sources, like evaporating primordial black holes, can be detected and localized using neutrino telescopes, emphasizing the importance of timing, sky position, and detector network coordination.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for source detection sensitivity considering source position and presents a case study on primordial black holes as transient neutrino sources.

Findings

Detection sensitivity depends on source sky position.

Localization accuracy is influenced by the source's right ascension.

A global neutrino detector network enhances transient source identification.

Abstract

The discovery of ultra-high-energy neutrinos by IceCube marked the beginning of neutrino astronomy. Yet, the origin and production mechanisms of these neutrinos remain an open question. With the observation of several neutrino events with energies about the PeV, transient sources - astrophysical objects that emit particles in brief, localized bursts - have emerged as promising candidates. In this work, we revisit the identification of such sources in IceCube and future neutrino telescopes, focusing on how both the timing and sky localization of the source affect the detection sensitivity. We present a framework to account for the source's right ascension in determining the effective area of detectors not located at the poles, such as KM3NeT. As a case study, we investigate evaporating primordial black holes (PBHs) as transient neutrino sources, showing that the detection prospects and localization accuracy are strongly influenced by the PBH's position in the sky. Our results emphasize the complementarity between neutrino and gamma-ray observatories and showcase the potential of a global network of neutrino detectors to identify and localize transient events that might be missed by traditional photon-based instruments.