A Search for Neutrino Point-source Populations in 7 yr of IceCube Data with Neutrino-count Statistics

© 2020. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved The presence of a population of point sources in a data set modifies the underlying neutrino-count statistics from the Poisson distribution. This deviation can be exactly quantified using the non-Poissonian template fitting technique, an...

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Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Astronomical Society 2021
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/132207
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collection MIT
description © 2020. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved The presence of a population of point sources in a data set modifies the underlying neutrino-count statistics from the Poisson distribution. This deviation can be exactly quantified using the non-Poissonian template fitting technique, and in this work we present the first application of this approach to the IceCube high-energy neutrino data set. Using this method, we search in 7 yr of IceCube data for point-source populations correlated with the disk of the Milky Way, the Fermi bubbles, the Schlegel, Finkbeiner, and Davis dust map, or with the isotropic extragalactic sky. No evidence for such a population is found in the data using this technique, and in the absence of a signal, we establish constraints on population models with source-count distribution functions that can be described by a power law with a single break. The derived limits can be interpreted in the context of many possible source classes. In order to enhance the flexibility of the results, we publish the full posterior from our analysis, which can be used to establish limits on specific population models that would contribute to the observed IceCube neutrino flux.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1322072022-10-03T11:14:53Z A Search for Neutrino Point-source Populations in 7 yr of IceCube Data with Neutrino-count Statistics © 2020. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved The presence of a population of point sources in a data set modifies the underlying neutrino-count statistics from the Poisson distribution. This deviation can be exactly quantified using the non-Poissonian template fitting technique, and in this work we present the first application of this approach to the IceCube high-energy neutrino data set. Using this method, we search in 7 yr of IceCube data for point-source populations correlated with the disk of the Milky Way, the Fermi bubbles, the Schlegel, Finkbeiner, and Davis dust map, or with the isotropic extragalactic sky. No evidence for such a population is found in the data using this technique, and in the absence of a signal, we establish constraints on population models with source-count distribution functions that can be described by a power law with a single break. The derived limits can be interpreted in the context of many possible source classes. In order to enhance the flexibility of the results, we publish the full posterior from our analysis, which can be used to establish limits on specific population models that would contribute to the observed IceCube neutrino flux. 2021-09-20T18:21:20Z 2021-09-20T18:21:20Z 2020 2020-09-24T17:24:53Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/132207 en 10.3847/1538-4357/ab7af9 Astrophysical Journal Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. application/pdf American Astronomical Society The American Astronomical Society
spellingShingle A Search for Neutrino Point-source Populations in 7 yr of IceCube Data with Neutrino-count Statistics
title A Search for Neutrino Point-source Populations in 7 yr of IceCube Data with Neutrino-count Statistics
title_full A Search for Neutrino Point-source Populations in 7 yr of IceCube Data with Neutrino-count Statistics
title_fullStr A Search for Neutrino Point-source Populations in 7 yr of IceCube Data with Neutrino-count Statistics
title_full_unstemmed A Search for Neutrino Point-source Populations in 7 yr of IceCube Data with Neutrino-count Statistics
title_short A Search for Neutrino Point-source Populations in 7 yr of IceCube Data with Neutrino-count Statistics
title_sort search for neutrino point source populations in 7 yr of icecube data with neutrino count statistics
url https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/132207