Constraints on high-energy neutrino emission from SN 2008D

¹ Dept. of Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA
² Dept. of Subatomic and Radiation Physics, University of Gent, 9000 Gent, Belgium
³ Dept. of Physics, University of Wisconsin, River Falls, WI 54022, USA
⁴ Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand
⁵ Dept. of Physics, University of Oxford, 1 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3NP, UK
⁶ Dept. of Physics, University of Wuppertal, 42119 Wuppertal, Germany
⁷ Bartol Research Institute and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA
⁸ Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA
⁹ Dept. of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
¹⁰ DESY, 15735 Zeuthen, Germany
¹¹ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
¹² Dept. of Physics and Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
¹³ Dept. of Astronomy, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
¹⁴ Université Libre de Bruxelles, Science Faculty CP230, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
¹⁵ Fakultät für Physik & Astronomie, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany
¹⁶ Dept. of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
¹⁷ Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA
¹⁸ III. Physikalisches Institut, RWTH Aachen University, 52056 Aachen, Germany
¹⁹ Oskar Klein Centre and Dept. of Physics, Stockholm University, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden
²⁰ Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Dienst ELEM, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
²¹ Physikalisches Institut, Universität Bonn, Nussallee 12, 53115 Bonn, Germany
²² Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Box 516, 75120 Uppsala, Sweden
²³ Dept. of Physics, TU Dortmund University, 44221 Dortmund, Germany
²⁴ Laboratory for High Energy Physics, École Polytechnique Fédérale, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
²⁵ Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, 69177 Heidelberg, Germany
²⁶ Dept. of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
²⁷ Dept. of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
²⁸ Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Utrecht University/SRON, 3584 CC Utrecht, The Netherlands
²⁹ CTSPS, Clark-Atlanta University, Atlanta, GA 30314, USA
³⁰ Dept. of Physics, Southern University, Baton Rouge, LA 70813, USA
³¹ Dept. of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA
³² Dept. of Physics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2G7
³³ Institute of Physics, University of Mainz, Staudinger Weg 7, 55099 Mainz, Germany
³⁴ Université de Mons, 7000 Mons, Belgium
³⁵ Dept. of Physics, Chiba University, Chiba 263-8522, Japan
³⁶ Institut für Physik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 12489 Berlin, Germany
e-mail: mail@nickkemming.com
³⁷ Also Università di Bari and Sezione INFN, Dipartimento di Fisica, 70126, Bari, Italy
³⁸ Dept. ofPhysics and Astronomy, University of Alaska Anchorage, 3211 Providence Dr., Anchorage, AK 99508, USA
³⁹ Dept. of Physics, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Bridgetown BB11000, Barbados
⁴⁰ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
⁴¹ School of Physics and Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA
⁴² Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA
⁴³ Affiliated with: Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Physikalisches Institut, 91058 Erlangen, Germany

Received: 16 September 2010
Accepted: 9 December 2010

Abstract

SN 2008D, a core collapse supernova at a distance of 27 Mpc, was serendipitously discovered by the Swift satellite through an associated X-ray flash. Core collapse supernovae have been observed in association with long gamma-ray bursts and X-ray flashes and a physical connection is widely assumed. This connection could imply that some core collapse supernovae possess mildly relativistic jets in which high-energy neutrinos are produced through proton-proton collisions. The predicted neutrino spectra would be detectable by Cherenkov neutrino detectors like IceCube. A search for a neutrino signal in temporal and spatial correlation with the observed X-ray flash of SN 2008D was conducted using data taken in 2007–2008 with 22 strings of the IceCube detector. Events were selected based on a boosted decision tree classifier trained with simulated signal and experimental background data. The classifier was optimized to the position and a “soft jet” neutrino spectrum assumed for SN 2008D. Using three search windows placed around the X-ray peak, emission time scales from 100–10 000 s were probed. No events passing the cuts were observed in agreement with the signal expectation of 0.13 events. Upper limits on the muon neutrino flux from core collapse supernovae were derived for different emission time scales and the principal model parameters were constrained. While no meaningful limits can be given in the case of an isotropic neutrino emission, the parameter space for a jetted emission can be constrained. Future analyses with the full 86 string IceCube detector could detect up to  ~100 events for a core-collapse supernova at 10 Mpc according to the soft jet model.