No abstract

Evidence for an extraterrestrial flux of high-energy neutrinos has now been found in multiple searches with the IceCube detector. The first solid evidence was provided by a search for neutrino events with deposited energies 30 TeV and interaction vertices inside the instrumented volume. Recent analyses suggest that the extraterrestrial flux extends to lower energies and is also visible with throughgoing, ν µ-induced tracks from the Northern hemisphere. Here, we combine the results from six different IceCube searches for astrophysical neutrinos in a maximum-likelihood analysis. The combined event sample features high-statistics samples of shower-like and track-like events. The data are fit in up to three observables: energy, zenith angle and event topology. Assuming the astrophysical neutrino flux to be isotropic and to consist of equal flavors at Earth, the all-flavor spectrum with neutrino energies between 25 TeV and 2.8 PeV is well described by an unbroken power law with best-fit spectral index −2.50 ± 0.09 and a flux at 100 TeV of 6.7 +1.1 −1.2 • 10 −18 GeV −1 s −1 sr −1 cm −2. Under the same assumptions, an unbroken power law with index −2 is disfavored with a significance of 3.8 σ (p = 0.0066%) with respect to the best fit. This significance is reduced to 2.1 σ (p = 1.7%) if instead we compare the best fit to a spectrum with index −2 that has an exponential cutoff at high energies. Allowing the electron neutrino flux to deviate from the other two flavors, we find a ν e fraction of 0.18 ± 0.11 at Earth. The sole production of electron neutrinos, which would be characteristic of neutron-decay dominated sources, is rejected with a significance of 3.6 σ (p = 0.014%).

The IceCube Collaboration has previously discovered a high-energy astrophysical neutrino flux using neutrino events with interaction vertices contained within the instrumented volume of the IceCube detector. We present a complementary measurement using charged current muon neutrino events where the interaction vertex can be outside this volume. As a consequence of the large muon range the effective area is significantly larger but the field of view is restricted to the Northern Hemisphere. IceCube data from 2009 through 2015 have been analyzed using a likelihood approach based on the reconstructed muon energy and zenith angle. At the highest neutrino energies between and a significant astrophysical contribution is observed, excluding a purely atmospheric origin of these events at significance. The data are well described by an isotropic, unbroken power-law flux with a normalization at neutrino energy of and a hard spectral index of . The observed spectrum is harder in comparison to previous IceCube analyses with lower energy thresholds which may indicate a break in the astrophysical neutrino spectrum of unknown origin. The highest-energy event observed has a reconstructed muon energy of which implies a probability of less than for this event to be of atmospheric origin. Analyzing the arrival directions of all events with reconstructed muon energies above no correlation with known γ-ray sources was found. Using the high statistics of atmospheric neutrinos we report the current best constraints on a prompt atmospheric muon neutrino flux originating from charmed meson decays which is below 1.06 in units of the flux normalization of the model in Enberg et al.

A high-energy neutrino event detected by IceCube on 22 September 2017 was coincident in direction and time with a gamma-ray flare from the blazar TXS 0506+056. Prompted by this association, we investigated 9.5 years of IceCube neutrino observations to search for excess emission at the position of the blazar. We found an excess of high-energy neutrino events, with respect to atmospheric backgrounds, at that position between September 2014 and March 2015. Allowing for time-variable flux, this constitutes 3.5σ evidence for neutrino emission from the direction of TXS 0506+056, independent of and prior to the 2017 flaring episode. This suggests that blazars are identifiable sources of the high-energy astrophysical neutrino flux.

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a cubic-kilometer-scale high-energy neutrino detector built into the ice at the South Pole. Construction of IceCube, the largest neutrino detector built to date, was completed in 2011 and enabled the discovery of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos. We describe here the design, production, and calibration of the IceCube digital optical module (DOM), the cable systems, computing hardware, and our methodology for drilling and deployment. We also describe the online triggering and data filtering systems that select candidate neutrino and cosmic ray events for analysis. Due to a rigorous pre-deployment protocol, 98.4% of the DOMs in the deep ice are operating and collecting data. IceCube routinely achieves a detector uptime of 99% by emphasizing software stability and monitoring. Detector operations have been stable since construction was completed, and the detector is expected to operate at least until the end of the next decade. Keywords: Large detector systems for particle and astroparticle physics, neutrino detectors, trigger concepts and systems (hardware and software), online farms and online filtering 1. Verifying the timing response of the DOMs throughout the analysis software chain.