Search for neutrino sources from the direction of IceCube alert events

We search for additional neutrino emission from the direction of IceCube\u27s highest energy public alert events. We take the arrival direction of 122 events with a high probability of being of astrophysical origin and look for steady and transient emission. We investigate 11 years of reprocessed and recalibrated archival IceCube data. For the steady scenario, we investigate if the potential emission is dominated by a single strong source or by many weaker sources. In contrast, for the transient emission we only search for single sources. In both cases, we find no significant additional neutrino component. Not having observed any significant excess, we constrain the maximal neutrino flux coming from all 122 origin directions (including the high-energy events) to Φ90%, 100 TeV=1.2×10−15~(TeV cm2 s)−1 at 100~TeV, assuming an E−2 emission, with 90\% confidence. The most significant transient emission of all 122 investigated regions of interest is the neutrino flare associated with the blazar TXS~0506+056. With the recalibrated data, the flare properties of this work agree with previous results. We fit a Gaussian time profile centered at μT=57001+38−26~MJD and with a width of σT=64+35−10~days. The best fit spectral index is γ=2.3±0.4 and we fit a single flavor fluence of J100 TeV=1.2+1.1−0.8×10−8~(TeV~cm2)−1. The global p-value for transient emission is pglobal=0.156 and, therefore, compatible with background

A model independent parametrization of the optical properties of the refrozen IceCube drill holes

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory deployed 5160 digital optical modules (DOMs) in a cubic kilometer of deep, glacial ice below the geographic South Pole, recording the Cherenkov light of passing charged particles. While the optical properties of the undisturbed ice are nowadays well understood, the properties of the refrozen drill holes still pose a challenge. From camera observations, we expect a central, strongly scattering column shadowing a part of the DOMs\u27 sensitive area. In MC simulation, this effect is commonly modeled as a modification to the DOMs\u27 angular acceptance curve, reducing the forward sensitivity of the DOMs. The associated uncertainty is a dominant detector systematic for neutrino oscillation studies as well as high-energy cascade reconstructions. Over the years, several measurements and fits of the drill holes\u27 optical properties and of the angular acceptance curve have been proposed, some of which are in tension. Here, we present a principle component analysis, which allows us to interpolate between all suggested scenarios, and thus provide a complete systematic variation within a unified framework at analysis level

Public Kaggle Competition “IceCube - Neutrinos in Deep ice”

The reconstruction of neutrino events in the IceCube experiment is crucial for many scientific analyses, including searches for cosmic neutrino sources. The Kaggle competition "IceCube - Neutrinos in Deep ice" was a public machine learning challenge designed to encourage the development of innovative solutions to improve the accuracy and efficiency of neutrino event reconstruction. Participants worked with a dataset of simulated neutrino events and were tasked with creating a suitable model to predict the direction vector of incoming neutrinos. From January to April 2023, hundreds of teams competed for a total of $50k prize money, which was awarded to the best performing few out of the many thousand submissions. In this contribution I will present some insights into the organization of this large outreach project, and summarize some of the main findings, results and takeaways

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

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

Design and Performance of the mDOM Mainboard for the IceCube Upgrade

About 400 mDOMs (multi-PMT Digital Optical Modules) will be deployed as part of the IceCube Upgrade Project. The mDOM’s high pressure-resistant glass sphere houses 24 PMTs, 3 cameras, 10 flasher LEDs and various sensors. The mDOM mainboard design was challenging due to the limited available volume and demanding engineering requirements, like the maximum overall power consumption, a minimum trigger threshold of 0.2 photoelectrons (PE), the dynamic range and the linearity requirements. Another challenge was the FPGA firmware design, dealing with about 35 Gbit/s of continuous ADC data from the digitization of the 24 PMT channels, the control of a high speed dynamic buffer and the discriminator output sampling rate of about 1GSPS. High-speed sampling of each of the discriminator outputs at ~1 GSPS improves the leading-edge time resolution for the PMT waveforms. An MCU (microcontroller unit) coordinates the data taking, the data exchange with the surface and the sensor readout. Both the FPGA firmware and MCU software can be updated remotely. After discussing the main hardware blocks and the analog frontend (AFE) design, test results will be shown, covering especially the AFE performance. Additionally, the functionality of various sensors and modules will be evaluated

From PeV to TeV: Astrophysical Neutrinos with Contained Vertices in 10 years of IceCube Data

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a cubic-kilometer Cherenkov detector at the South Pole, designed to study neutrinos of astrophysical origin. We present an analysis of the Medium Energy Starting Events (MESE), which is a veto-based event selection that selects neutrinos from a background of cosmic rays. This is an extension of the High Energy Starting Event (HESE) analysis, which established the existence of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin. The HESE sample is consistent with a single power law spectrum with best-fit index 2.87+0.20-0.19, which is softer than complementary IceCube measurements of the astrophysical neutrino spectrum. While HESE is sensitive to neutrinos above 60 TeV, MESE improves the sensitivity to lower energies, down to 1 TeV. In this analysis we use an improved understanding of atmospheric backgrounds in the astrophysical neutrino sample via more accurate modeling of the detector self-veto. A previous measurement with a 2-year MESE dataset had indicated the presence of a possible 30 TeV excess. With 10 years of data, we have a larger sample size to investigate this excess. We will use this event selection to measure the cosmic neutrino energy spectrum over a wide energy range. The flavor ratio of astrophysical neutrinos will also be discussed