Searching for soft relativistic jets in core-collapse supernovae with the IceCube optical follow-up program

¹ III. Physikalisches Institut, RWTH Aachen University, 52056 Aachen, Germany
² Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA
³ Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alaska Anchorage, 3211 Providence Dr., Anchorage, AK 99508, USA
⁴ University of Michigan, Randall Laboratory of Physics, 450 Church St., Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-1040, USA
⁵ CTSPS, Clark-Atlanta University, Atlanta, GA 30314, USA
⁶ School of Physics and Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA
⁷ Dept. of Physics, Southern University, Baton Rouge, LA 70813, USA
⁸ Dept. of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
⁹ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
¹⁰ Institut für Physik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 12489 Berlin, Germany
¹¹ Fakultät für Physik & Astronomie,Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany
¹² Physikalisches Institut, Universität Bonn, Nussallee 12, 53115 Bonn, Germany
¹³ Dept. of Physics, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Bridgetown BB11000, Barbados
¹⁴ Université Libre de Bruxelles, Science Faculty CP230, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
¹⁵ Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Dienst ELEM, B 1050 Brussels, Belgium
¹⁶ Dept. of Physics, Chiba University, 263-8522 Chiba, Japan
¹⁷ Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand
¹⁸ Dept. of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
¹⁹ Dept. of Physics and Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
²⁰ Dept. of Astronomy, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
²¹ Dept. of Physics, TU Dortmund University, 44221 Dortmund, Germany
²² Dept. of Physics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2G7, Canada
²³ Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Gent, 9000 Gent, Belgium
²⁴ Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, 69177 Heidelberg, Germany
²⁵ Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA
²⁶ Laboratory for High Energy Physics, École Polytechnique Fédérale, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
²⁷ Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA
²⁸ Dept. of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA
²⁹ Dept. of Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA
³⁰ Institute of Physics, University of Mainz, Staudinger Weg 7, 55099 Mainz, Germany
³¹ Université de Mons, 7000 Mons, Belgium
³² Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Nainital, India
³³ Bartol Research Institute and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA
³⁴ Dept. of Physics, University of Oxford, 1 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3NP, UK
³⁵ Dept. of Physics, University of Wisconsin, River Falls, WI 54022, USA
³⁶ Oskar Klein Centre and Dept. of Physics, Stockholm University, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden
³⁷ Dept. of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
³⁸ Dept. of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
³⁹ Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Box 516, 75120 Uppsala, Sweden
⁴⁰ Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The Australian National University, Cotter Road, Weston Creek, ACT 2611, Australia
⁴¹ Dept. of Physics, University of Wuppertal, 42119 Wuppertal, Germany
⁴² DESY, 15735 Zeuthen, Germany
⁴³ Now at Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA
⁴⁴ Now at Physics Department, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, SD 57701, USA
⁴⁵ Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
⁴⁶ Also Sezione INFN, Dipartimento di Fisica, 70126, Bari, Italy
⁴⁷ Now at T.U. Munich, 85748 Garching & Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 91058 Erlangen, Germany
⁴⁸ Now at T.U. Munich, 85748 Garching, Germany
⁴⁹ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA

Received: 12 September 2011
Accepted: 21 December 2011

Abstract

Context. Transient neutrino sources such as gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and supernovae (SNe) are hypothesized to emit bursts of high-energy neutrinos on a time-scale of  ≲100 s. While GRB neutrinos would be produced in high relativistic jets, core-collapse SNe might host soft-relativistic jets, which become stalled in the outer layers of the progenitor star leading to an efficient production of high-energy neutrinos.

Aims. To increase the sensitivity to these neutrinos and identify their sources, a low-threshold optical follow-up program for neutrino multiplets detected with the IceCube observatory has been implemented.

Methods. If a neutrino multiplet, i.e. two or more neutrinos from the same direction within 100 s, is found by IceCube a trigger is sent to the Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment, ROTSE. The 4 ROTSE telescopes immediately start an observation program of the corresponding region of the sky in order to detect an optical counterpart to the neutrino events.

Results. No statistically significant excess in the rate of neutrino multiplets has been observed and furthermore no coincidence with an optical counterpart was found.

Conclusions. The search allows, for the first time, to set stringent limits on current models predicting a high-energy neutrino flux from soft relativistic hadronic jets in core-collapse SNe. We conclude that a sub-population of SNe with typical Lorentz boost factor and jet energy of 10 and 3 × 10⁵¹ erg, respectively, does not exceed 4.2% at 90% confidence.