Nova RS Oph: upper limits from a search for coincident neutrinos with IceCube

ATel #14851; Alex Pizzuto (UW-Madison), Justin Vandenbroucke (UW-Madison), Marcos Santander (UAlabama) for the IceCube Collaboration
on 11 Aug 2021; 21:37 UT
Credential Certification: Marcos Santander (jmsantander@ua.edu)

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The IceCube Collaboration (http://icecube.wisc.edu/) reports:
IceCube has performed a search for track-like muon neutrino events arriving from the direction of the recurrent nova RS Ophiuchi (ATel #14838), which was also detected as a GeV gamma-ray source by Fermi-LAT (ATel #14834 and ATel #14845) as well as a VHE gamma-ray source by H.E.S.S. (ATel #14844). The search was performed using a time window three days in duration which covered the beginning of the observed optical outburst (2021-08-08 12:00:00 UTC to 2021-08-11 12:00:00 UTC), during which IceCube was collecting good quality data. We find that the data are consistent with atmospheric background expectations, with a p-value of 1.0. We accordingly derive a time-integrated muon-neutrino flux upper limit for this source of E^2 dN/ dE = 4.8 x 10^-5 TeV cm^-2 at 90% CL, under the assumption of an E^-2 power law. 90% of events IceCube would detect from a source at this declination with an E^-2 spectrum are between approximately 2 TeV and 10 PeV.
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.