Search for cosmic neutrinos from point-like sources with the ANTARES Neutrino Telescope

One of the main questions in Physics is the origin of high-energy cosmic rays. In the last decades great progress has been made related to their energy spectrum and composition but their origin remains uncertain. The observation of cosmic neutrinos can enlarge the information, as they can emerge from dense media and travel across cosmological distances without being deflected by magnetic fields nor absorbed by ambient matter and radiation. ANTARES is the first undersea neutrino telescope and the only one currently operating. Its location in the Northern Hemisphere allows for surveying a large part of the Galactic Plane, including the Galactic Centre, thus complementing the sky coverage of the IceCube detector installed at the South Pole. In this contribution the search for cosmic neutrino pointlike sources using six years of data is described, no signal has been found and upper limits on the flux normalization for an energy spectrum ∝ E−2ν have been set

Indirect detection of Dark Matter with the ANTARES Neutrino Telescope

[EN] One of the main objectives of the ANTARES neutrino telescope is the search for neutrinos produced in self-annihilation of Dark Matter (DM) particles. The analysis for different sources of DM (Sun, Galactic Center, Earth, ...) or DM models (SUSY, Secluded) will be described and the results presented. The specific advantages of neutrino telescopes in general and of ANTARES in particular will be explained. As an example, the indirect search for DM towards the Sun performed by neutrino telescopes currently leads to more stringent limits on the spin-dependent WIMP-nucleon cross section with respect to existing direct detection experiments.We acknowledge the financial support of the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Grants FPA2012-37528-C02-02, and Consolider MultiDark CSD2009-00064, of the Generalitat Valenciana, Grants ACOMP/2015/175 PrometeoII/2014/079 and of the European FEDER funds.Ardid Ramírez, M. (2016). Indirect detection of Dark Matter with the ANTARES Neutrino Telescope. EPJ Web of Conferences. 116:1-5. https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201611604002S1511

A compact array calibrator to study the feasibility of acoustic neutrino detection

[EN] Underwater acoustic detection of ultra-high-energy neutrinos was proposed already in 1950s: when a neutrino interacts with a nucleus in water, the resulting particle cascade produces a pressure pulse that has a bipolar temporal structure and propagates within a flat disk-like volume. A telescope that consists of thousands of acoustic sensors deployed in the deep sea can monitor hundreds of cubic kilometres of water looking for these signals and discriminating them from acoustic noise. To study the feasibility of the technique it is critical to have a calibrator able to mimic the neutrino signature that can be operated from a vessel. Due to the axial-symmetry of the signal, their very directive short bipolar shape and the constraints of operating at sea, the development of such a calibrator is very challenging. Once the possibility of using the acoustic parametric technique for this aim was validated with the first compact array calibrator prototype, in this paper we describe the new design for such a calibrator composed of an array of piezo ceramic tube transducers emitting in axial direction.We acknowledge the financial support of the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Grants FPA2012-37528-C02-02, and Consolider MultiDark CSD2009-00064, of the Generalitat Valenciana, Grants ACOMP/2015/175 PrometeoII/2014/079 and of the European FEDER funds.Ardid Ramírez, M.; Camarena Femenia, F.; Felis-Enguix, I.; Herrero Debón, A.; Llorens Alvarez, CD.; Martínez Mora, JA.; Saldaña-Coscollar, M. (2016). A compact array calibrator to study the feasibility of acoustic neutrino detection. EPJ Web of Conferences. 116(03001):1-4. https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201611603001S141160300

Measurement of the atmospheric muon depth intensity relation with the NEMO Phase-2 tower

The results of the analysis of the data collected with the NEMO Phase-2 tower, deployed at 3500 m depth about 80 km off-shore Capo Passero (Italy), are presented. Cherenkov photons detected with the photomultipliers tubes were used to reconstruct the tracks of atmospheric muons. Their zenith-angle distribution was measured and the results compared with Monte Carlo simulations. An evaluation of the systematic effects due to uncertainties on environmental and detector parameters is also included. The associated depth intensity relation was evaluated and compared with previous measurements and theoretical predictions. With the present analysis, the muon depth intensity relation has been measured up to 13 km of water equivalent.Comment: submitted to Astroparticle Physic

The Antares Collaboration : Contributions to the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2015, The Hague)

The ANTARES detector, completed in 2008, is the largest neutrino telescope in the Northern hemisphere. Located at a depth of 2.5 km in the Mediterranean Sea, 40 km off the Toulon shore, its main goal is the search for astrophysical high energy neutrinos. In this paper we collect the 21 contributions of the ANTARES collaboration to the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2015). The scientific output is very rich and the contributions included in these proceedings cover the main physics results, ranging from steady point sources, diffuse searches, multi-messenger analyses to exotic physics

Search for muon-neutrino emission from GeV and TeV gamma-ray flaring blazars using five years of data of the ANTARES telescope

The ANTARES telescope is well-suited for detecting astrophysical transient neutrino sources as it can observe a full hemisphere of the sky at all times with a high duty cycle. The background due to atmospheric particles can be drastically reduced, and the point-source sensitivity improved, by selecting a narrow time window around possible neutrino production periods. Blazars, being radio-loud active galactic nuclei with their jets pointing almost directly towards the observer, are particularly attractive potential neutrino point sources, since they are among the most likely sources of the very high-energy cosmic rays. Neutrinos and gamma rays may be produced in hadronic interactions with the surrounding medium. Moreover, blazars generally show high time variability in their light curves at different wavelengths and on various time scales. This paper presents a time-dependent analysis applied to a selection of flaring gamma-ray blazars observed by the FERMI/LAT experiment and by TeV Cherenkov telescopes using five years of ANTARES data taken from 2008 to 2012. The results are compatible with fluctuations of the background. Upper limits on the neutrino fluence have been produced and compared to the measured gamma-ray spectral energy distribution.Comment: 27 pages, 16 figure

All-sky Search for High-Energy Neutrinos from Gravitational Wave Event GW170104 with the ANTARES Neutrino Telescope

Advanced LIGO detected a significant gravitational wave signal (GW170104) originating from the coalescence of two black holes during the second observation run on January 4$^{\textrm{th}}$, 2017. An all-sky high-energy neutrino follow-up search has been made using data from the ANTARES neutrino telescope, including both upgoing and downgoing events in two separate analyses. No neutrino candidates were found within $\pm500$ s around the GW event time nor any time clustering of events over an extended time window of $\pm3$ months. The non-detection is used to constrain isotropic-equivalent high-energy neutrino emission from GW170104 to less than $\sim4\times 10^{54}$ erg for a $E^{-2}$ spectrum

The ANTARES Collaboration: Contributions to ICRC 2017 Part I: Neutrino astronomy (diffuse fluxes and point sources)

Papers on neutrino astronomy (diffuse fluxes and point sources, prepared for the 35th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2017, Busan, South Korea) by the ANTARES Collaboratio

The ANTARES Collaboration: Contributions to ICRC 2017 Part III: Searches for dark matter and exotics, neutrino oscillations and detector calibration

Papers on the searches for dark matter and exotics, neutrino oscillations and detector calibration, prepared for the 35th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2017, Busan, South Korea) by the ANTARES Collaboratio