PKS 0446+11: Upper limits from a neutrino search with IceCube
ATel #16414; Jessie Thwaites (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Justin Vandenbroucke (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Marcos Santander (University of Alabama), Erik Blaufuss (University of Maryland)
on 20 Jan 2024; 01:40 UT
Credential Certification: Justin Vandenbroucke (justin.vandenbroucke@wisc.edu)
Subjects: Neutrinos, Blazar
Referred to by ATel #: 16417
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 PKS 0446+11 flare reported by Fermi-LAT (GCN Circular 35517 / ATel #16398) prior to the IceCube-240105A alert event (GCN Circular 35498, 35512). The search was performed with a time window of 63 days (2023-10-20 12:00:00.0 UTC to 2023-12-22 12:00:00.0 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 = 5.9 x 10^-2 GeV 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 approximately between 1 TeV and 2 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.
[1] IceCube Collaboration, R. Abbasi et al., ApJ 910 4 (2021).
