Observation of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos in three years of IceCube data.

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

A search for high-energy neutrinos interacting within the IceCube detector between 2010 and 2012 provided the first evidence for a high-energy neutrino flux of extraterrestrial origin. Results from an analysis using the same methods with a third year (2012-2013) of data from the complete IceCube detector are consistent with the previously reported astrophysical flux in the 100 TeV-PeV range at the level of 10(-8) GeV cm-2 s-1 sr-1 per flavor and reject a purely atmospheric explanation for the combined three-year data at 5.7σ. The data are consistent with expectations for equal fluxes of all three neutrino flavors and with isotropic arrival directions, suggesting either numerous or spatially extended sources. The three-year data set, with a live time of 988 days, contains a total of 37 neutrino candidate events with deposited energies ranging from 30 to 2000 TeV. The 2000-TeV event is the highest-energy neutrino interaction ever observed.

Related collections

Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Phys. Rev. Lett.

Title: Physical review letters

Publisher: American Physical Society (APS)

ISSN (Electronic): 1079-7114

ISSN (Print): 0031-9007

Publication date (Electronic): Sep 05 2014

Volume: 113

Issue: 10

Affiliations

[1 ] School of Chemistry & Physics, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia 5005 Australia.

[2 ] DESY, D-15735 Zeuthen, Germany.

[3 ] Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand.

[4 ] Département de physique nucléaire et corpusculaire, Université de Genève, CH-1211 Genève, Switzerland.

[5 ] Department of Physics and Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.

[6 ] Oskar Klein Centre and Department of Physics, Stockholm University, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden.

[7 ] Erlangen Centre for Astroparticle Physics, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, D-91058 Erlangen, Germany.

[8 ] Department of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA.

[9 ] III. Physikalisches Institut, RWTH Aachen University, D-52056 Aachen, Germany.

[10 ] Department of Physics, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, South Dakota 57701, USA.

[11 ] Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, California 92697, USA.

[12 ] Institute of Physics, University of Mainz, Staudinger Weg 7, D-55099 Mainz, Germany.

[13 ] Department of Physics and Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA and Department of Astronomy, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA.

[14 ] Fakultät für Physik & Astronomie, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, D-44780 Bochum, Germany.

[15 ] Department of Physics, University of Wuppertal, D-42119 Wuppertal, Germany.

[16 ] Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA.

[17 ] T.U. Munich, D-85748 Garching, Germany.

[18 ] Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045, USA.

[19 ] Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.

[20 ] Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Box 516, S-75120 Uppsala, Sweden.

[21 ] Department of Physics, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 440-746, Korea.

[22 ] Physikalisches Institut, Universität Bonn, Nussallee 12, D-53115 Bonn, Germany.

[23 ] Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Dienst ELEM, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium.

[24 ] School of Physics and Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, USA.

[25 ] Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A7, Canada.

[26 ] Department of Physics, TU Dortmund University, D-44221 Dortmund, Germany.

[27 ] Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA and Department of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA.

[28 ] Department of Physics and Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA.

[29 ] Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Gent, B-9000 Gent, Belgium.

[30 ] Institut für Physik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, D-12489 Berlin, Germany.

[31 ] Bartol Research Institute and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716, USA.

[32 ] Department of Physics, Southern University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70813, USA.

[33 ] Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.

[34 ] Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.

[35 ] Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.

[36 ] Department of Physics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E1, Canada.

[37 ] Université Libre de Bruxelles, Science Faculty CP230, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium.

[38 ] Department of Physics, Chiba University, Chiba 263-8522, Japan.

[39 ] CTSPS, Clark-Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia 30314, USA.

[40 ] Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794-3800, USA.

[41 ] Université de Mons, 7000 Mons, Belgium.

[42 ] Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark.

[43 ] Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, River Falls, Wisconsin 54022, USA.

[44 ] Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487, USA.

[45 ] Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alaska Anchorage, 3211 Providence Drive, Anchorage, Alaska 99508, USA.

[46 ] Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark and Department of Physics, University of Oxford, 1 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3NP, United Kingdom.

[47 ] Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA and Department of Physics and Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.

Article

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.101101

PubMed ID: 25238345

SO-VID: 332ff6ee-a983-4e2d-823e-788e0646cf1a

History

Data availability:

Comments

Comment on this article

scite_

Cited by 71

See all cited by