Probing neutrino emission at GeV energies from compact binary mergers detected during O1-O4a with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory

TL;DR

This study searches for GeV neutrino emissions from compact binary mergers detected via gravitational waves during LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA's O4 run using IceCube-DeepCore, finding no significant signals but setting upper limits.

Contribution

First dedicated search for GeV neutrinos from binary mergers during O4, establishing upper limits and exploring subpopulations of potential neutrino sources.

Findings

No statistically significant neutrino excess detected.

Upper limits set on neutrino emission from mergers.

No evidence found for neutrino-emitting subpopulations.

Abstract

Compact binary mergers, detected in gravitational waves since 2015, are candidate sources for astrophysical neutrinos in the GeV regime from proton-proton and proton-neutron collisions. This contribution presents the results of the search for such a signal using mergers detected during the fourth observing run of the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA interferometers. We use the dense infill array at the center of the IceCube detector, IceCube-DeepCore, to select neutrino candidates in the 0.5-5 GeV energy range. The search for a statistically significant excess associated with an astrophysical signal is performed in a $\pm$ 500 s window around the gravitational wave detection time. We do not observe any statistically significant excess in the neutrino data, and set upper limits on the neutrino emission from these objects. Additionally, we search for subpopulations of neutrino-emitting sources, including merger events detected in previous observing runs; no significant signal has been identified yet.