학술논문

Search for correlations between the arrival directions of IceCube neutrino events and ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays detected by the Pierre Auger Observatory and the Telescope Array
Document Type
article
Source
Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. 2016(1)
Subject
neutrino experiments
ultra high energy cosmic rays
cosmic ray experiments
neutrino astronomy
astro-ph.HE
Nuclear & Particles Physics
Astronomical and Space Sciences
Atomic
Molecular
Nuclear
Particle and Plasma Physics
Atomic
Molecular
Nuclear
Particle and Plasma Physics
Language
Abstract
This paper presents the results of different searches for correlations between very high-energy neutrino candidates detected by IceCube and the highest-energy cosmic rays measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory and the Telescope Array. We first consider samples of cascade neutrino events and of high-energy neutrino-induced muon tracks, which provided evidence for a neutrino flux of astrophysical origin, and study their cross-correlation with the ultrahigh-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) samples as a function of angular separation. We also study their possible directional correlations using a likelihood method stacking the neutrino arrival directions and adopting different assumptions on the size of the UHECR magnetic deflections. Finally, we perform another likelihood analysis stacking the UHECR directions and using a sample of through-going muon tracks optimized for neutrino point-source searches with sub-degree angular resolution. No indications of correlations at discovery level are obtained for any of the searches performed. The smallest of the p-values comes from the search for correlation between UHECRs with IceCube high-energy cascades, a result that should continue to be monitored.