Optical and X-ray early follow-up of ANTARES neutrino alerts
In: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. IOP Publishing: Bristol. ISSN 1475-7516; e-ISSN 1475-7516, meer
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| Author keywords |
ANTARES; Neutrino astronomy; Transient sources; Gamma-ray bursts; Optical/X-ray follow-up |
| Auteurs | | Top |
- Adrian-Martinez, S.
- van Haren, H.
- Antares Collaboration
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| Abstract |
High-energy neutrinos could be produced in the interaction of charged cosmic rays withmatter or radiation surrounding astrophysical sources. Even with the recent detection of extraterrestrialhigh-energy neutrinos by the IceCube experiment, no astrophysical neutrino source has yetbeen discovered. Transient sources, such as gamma-ray bursts, core-collapse supernovae, or activegalactic nuclei are promising candidates. Multi-messenger programs o?er a unique opportunity todetect these transient sources. By combining the information provided by the ANTARES neutrinotelescope with information coming from other observatories, the probability of detecting a source isenhanced, allowing the possibility of identifying a neutrino progenitor from a single detected event.A method based on optical and X-ray follow-ups of high-energy neutrino alerts has been developedwithin the ANTARES collaboration. This program, denoted as TAToO, triggers a network of roboticoptical telescopes (TAROT and ROTSE) and the Swift-XRT with a delay of only a few seconds aftera neutrino detection, and is therefore well-suited to search for fast transient sources. To identify anoptical or X-ray counterpart to a neutrino signal, the images provided by the follow-up observationsare analysed with dedicated pipelines. A total of 42 alerts with optical and 7 alerts with X-ray imagestaken with a maximum delay of 24 hours after the neutrino trigger have been analysed. Nooptical or X-ray counterparts associated to the neutrino triggers have been found, and upper limits ontransient source magnitudes have been derived. The probability to reject the gamma-ray burst originhypothesis has been computed for each alert. |
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