FRB 20121102A: Upper limits from a neutrino search with IceCube

ATel #17927; Yuhua Yao (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Anna Franckowiak (Ruhr-University Bochum)
on 26 Jul 2026; 07:45 UT
Credential Certification: Anna Franckowiak (anna.franckowiak@desy.de)

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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 frequently repeating fast radio burst FRB 20121102A, following the report of renewed activity by FAST (ATel #17921). We analyzed a time window of 3600 seconds (2026-07-17 23:42:59.04 UTC to 2026-07-18 00:42:59.04 UTC), during which IceCube was collecting good quality data. This time window is centered on the 1800 second interval with a high burst rate reported by FAST. The analysis is consistent with the atmospheric background only hypothesis, 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 = 4.8e-2 GeV cm^-2 at 90% confidence level, for 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 700 GeV and 470 TeV.

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)