Results from the ANTARES Neutrino Telescope

Abstract

Abstract. ANTARES is the largest neutrino telescope in the Northern hemisphere, running in its final configuration since 2008. After the discovery of a cosmic neutrino diffuse flux by the IceCube detector, the search for its origin has become a key mission in highenergy astrophysics. The ANTARES sensitivity is large enough to constrain the origin of the IceCube excess from regions extended up to 0.2 sr in the Southern sky. The Southern sky has been studied searching for point-like objects, for extended regions of emission (as the Galactic plane) and for signal from transient objects selected through multimessenger observations. Upper limits are presented assuming different spectral indexes for the energy spectrum of neutrino sources. In addition, ANTARES provides results on studies of the sky in combination with different multimessenger experiments, on atmospheric neutrinos, on the searches for rare particles in the cosmic radiation (such as magnetic monopoles and nuclearites), and on Earth and Sea science. Particularly relevant are the searches for Dark Matter: the limits obtained for the spin-dependent WIMP-nucleon cross section overcome that of existing direct-detection experiments. The recent results, widely discussed in dedicated presentations during the 7 th edition of the Very Large Volume Neutrino Telescope Workshop (VLVνT-2015), are highlighted in this paper.

Constraints and prospects on gravitational-wave and neutrino emissions using GW150914

“…The diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux measured by IceCube is given by [14] E 2 Φ(E) = 0.84 ± 0.3 × 10 −8 GeV cm −2 s −1 sr −1 , (11) fitted with a fixed spectral index of 2 in the range between 60 TeV and 3 PeV of deposited energy. While there is a more up-to-date estimate of the flux [23], which was fitted with a free spectral index, the analysis is performed using the standard spectral index of 2.…”

“…In order to show how the non-detection of counterpart neutrinos 3 from GW150914 constrains the neutrino emission fraction f ν BBH , it is necessary to convert the flux at Earth to the flux seen in a detector. The present analysis will focus on both IceCube [10] and ANTARES [11], which can detect high energy neutrinos between 100 GeV and 100 PeV. In order to be similar to the follow-up search of GW150914 by IceCube [3], the IceCube effective area presented in [24] will be used.…”

“…Nevertheless, in general no emission apart from gravitational waves (GW) is predicted, since no matter is expected to be present in the environment of the black hole binary. To test this hypothesis, given that Megaton-scale neutrino detectors such as IceCube [10], ANTARES [11] and Baikal-GVD [12] are available, it is useful to search for counterpart neutrinos. In view of the multi-messenger approach, a neutrino detection of a source discovered in gravitational waves would shine a unique light on the source properties.…”