Low-latency neutrino follow-up combining diverse IceCube selections

TL;DR

This paper presents an extended low-latency neutrino follow-up method for IceCube, integrating diverse event selections to improve multi-messenger transient detection across a broader energy range and neutrino flavors.

Contribution

It introduces a new pipeline that incorporates multiple neutrino event selections into IceCube's real-time follow-up analysis, enhancing sensitivity and coverage.

Findings

Validated the extended analysis framework with example studies.

Demonstrated improved sensitivity to a wider neutrino energy spectrum.

Enabled inclusion of more computationally intensive reconstruction methods.

Abstract

Neutrino observations are crucial for multi-messenger astronomy, but currently limited by effective area and atmospheric background. However, while other telescopes must point their limited field of view, IceCube can perform full-sky realtime follow-up of astrophysical transient sources with high uptime. For this, IceCube uses its Fast Response Analysis (FRA), which can provide results from an unbinned maximum likelihood analysis within tens of minutes of an astrophysical transient. Besides manually selected transient candidates, it also routinely scans areas of the sky compatible with gravitational wave alerts from LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA and the IceCube event singlets most likely to originate from an astrophysical source. Currently the analysis uses TeV muon neutrino candidate events whose signature permits especially precise angular reconstruction, selected and reconstructed at the South Pole and transmitted with low-latency over satellite. Recently, different event selections are also being included in IceCube analyses. These efforts include the follow-up of gravitational wave events with GeV neutrinos detected by IceCube-DeepCore and the observation of the Galactic plane with cascade events produced by all neutrino flavors. If made available on a day-scale latency, these event selections can also be used in FRAs. Moreso, multiple event samples can be combined in a Fast Response Analysis that is sensitive to a broader energy range of a neutrino transient spectrum and ensures the inclusion of all neutrino flavors. We present the analysis method and technical aspects of such an extension of the existing framework. This includes a proposed new pipeline allowing the inclusion of the more computationally-intensive reconstruction methods used by the aforementioned event selections. The extension is validated using example analyses implemented in this framework. (abbreviated)