Search for neutrinos from transient sources with the ANTARES telescope and optical follow-up observations

Abstract

The ANTARES telescope has the opportunity to detect transient neutrino sources, such as gamma-ray bursts, core-collapse supernovae, flares of active nuclei... To enhance the sensitivity to these sources, we have developed a new detection method based on the optical follow-up of "golden" neutrino events such as neutrino doublets coincident in time and space or single neutrinos of very high energy. The ANTARES Collaboration has therefore implemented a very fast on-line reconstruction with a good angular resolution. These characteristics allow to trigger an optical telescope network; since February 2009. ANTARES is sending alert trigger one or two times per month to the two 25 cm robotic telescope of TAROT. This follow-up of such special events would not only give access to the nature of the sources but also improves the sensitivity for transient neutrino sources.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, Proceedings of the 31st ICRC, Lodz, Polan, July 200