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AT2018cow: IceCube neutrino search

ATel #11785; Erik Blaufuss (UMD) on behalf of the IceCube Collaboration
on 27 Jun 2018; 02:15 UT
Credential Certification: Erik Blaufuss (blaufuss@umd.edu)

Subjects: Neutrinos, Transient

Referred to by ATel #: 11793

IceCube has performed a search for track-like muon neutrino events arriving from the position of AT2018cow/ATLAS18qqn (Smartt et al., ATel #11727) in the time range of the last confirmed non-detection (Fremling et al. ATel #11738, 2018-06-13 00:00 UTC) to the detection time (ATel #11727, 2018-06-16 10:35 UTC). Two neutrino track events are found in spatial coincidence with AT2018cow during this ~3.5 day period and are consistent with the expected rate of atmospheric neutrino background (0.17 events expected in this time). A maximum likelihood analysis returns a p-value of 0.03 (1.8 sigma). Based on this, a time-integrated muon-neutrino flux normalization upper limit assuming an E^-2 spectrum (E^2 dN/dE) at the 90% CL of 6.1 x 10^-5 TeV cm^-2 is found for this observation period.

The detected neutrinos, both consistent with the source location within the track uncertainties for these events (~2 degrees) arrived at:

2018-06-14 19:51:09 UTC (MJD 58283.827)

2018-06-15 10:25:50 UTC (MJD 58284.435)

While these detected neutrinos do not represent a significant detection, their arrival times are of potential interest to the astronomical community.

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a cubic-kilometer neutrino detector operating at the geographic South Pole, Antarctica. The IceCube realtime alert point of contact can be reached at roc@icecube.wisc.edu