University of Leicester
Browse

Four Swift searches for transient sources of high-energy neutrinos

Download (7.56 MB)
conference contribution
posted on 2018-05-02, 13:49 authored by A. Keivani, D. F. Cowen, D. B. Fox, J. A. Kennea, G. Tešić, C. F. Turley, P. A. Evans, J. P. Osborne, F. E. Marshall
We present results of the first four Swift satellite follow-up campaigns seeking to identify transient or variable X-ray or UV/optical sources that might be associated with individual candidate high-energy cosmic muon neutrinos detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. Real-time public alerts providing coordinates and arrival times of likely-cosmic neutrinos have been provided by IceCube, via the Astrophysical Multimessenger Observatory Network, since April 2016. Subsequent Swift X-ray observations of four likely-cosmic neutrinos (events 160731A, 161103A, 170312A, and 170321A) reveal multiple X-ray sources in the targeted 90%-containment regions, most of which have been previously identified, and none of which are considered likely sources of high-energy neutrinos. Observations exclude association with the brightest 30% to 65% of Swifttype γ-ray burst X-ray afterglows over the observed regions. Contemporaneous Swift UV/optical observations, providing reduced coverage of the event localizations, also reveal no candidate transient or variable UV/optical counterparts. We discuss the results of these campaigns and our plans for further follow-up of likely-cosmic high-energy neutrinos from IceCube.

Funding

The authors thank the IceCube collaboration for publicly distributing high energy neutrinos in real-time, and the Swift team for their rapid responses to these alerts. A.K., D.B.F., D.F.C., G.T. and C.F.T. acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation under grant PHY-1412633; A.K. and D.F.C. acknowledge support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Swift Guest Investigator Program under grant NNX17AI95G. A.K. and G.T. gratefully acknowledge support from the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos at the Pennsylvania State University. P.A.E. and J.P.O. acknowledge support from the UK Space Agency.

History

Citation

Proceedings of Science, 2017, Part F135186

Author affiliation

/Organisation/COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING/Department of Physics and Astronomy

Source

35th International Cosmic Ray Conference — ICRC2017, Bexco, Busan, Korea

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Published in

Proceedings of Science

Publisher

SISSA, the International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste

eissn

1824-8039

Copyright date

2017

Available date

2018-05-02

Publisher version

https://pos.sissa.it/301/1015/

Temporal coverage: start date

2017-07-10

Language

en

Usage metrics

    University of Leicester Publications

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Keywords

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC