Constraints on the neutrino emission from the Galactic Ridge with the ANTARES telescope

S Adrián-Martínez ,C Racca ,A Albert ,J Hößl ,D Dornic ,J Barrios-Martí ,J A Martínez-Mora ,R Bruijn ,I El Bojaddaini ,Giulia De Bonis ,L Caramete ,A Creusot ,J J Hernández-Rey ,A Margiotta ,C Perrina ,A Kouchner ,G Anton ,E Leonora ,M Circella ,A Enzenhöfer ,C Lachaud ,K Geyer ,M Sanguineti ,R Gracia-Ruiz ,P Piattelli ,M Anghinolfi ,Κ Graf ,J Hofestädt ,A Capone ,M Saldaña ,U Katz ,R Lahmann ,C Donzaud ,T Michael ,J D Zornoza ,A Mathieu ,P Sapienza ,D Turpin ,R Bormuth ,V Kulikovskiy ,T Avgitas ,A Heijboer ,S Geißelsöder ,A Coleiro ,D Kießling ,M De Jong ,M Taiuti ,Hans Van Haren ,M Spurio ,B Baret ,A Deschamps ,C Vallée ,C W James ,P Migliozzi ,A Marinelli ,T Eberl ,M Tselengidou ,J Schnabel ,V Giordano ,B Vallage ,L Fusco ,K Roensch ,P Coyle ,R Coniglione ,M Ardid ,J Wilms ,C Sieger ,V Bertín ,C Distefano ,C L Mueller ,S Hallmann ,I Felis ,I Kreykenbohm ,S Biagi ,Y Hello ,E Nezri ,J Carr ,D Lefèvre ,A Sánchez-Losa ,M Kreter ,P Gay ,V Van Elewyck ,G E Păvălaş ,T Pradier ,G Riccobene ,S Loucatos ,V Popa ,S J Wagner ,G Illuminati ,C Hugon ,S Basa ,C Pellegrino ,K Fehn ,Hervé Glotin ,D Vivolo ,Th Stolarczyk ,M C Bouwhuis ,M Kadler ,Christoph Tönnis ,H Costantini ,S Celli ,O Kalekin ,A Moussa ,T Seitz ,F Schüßler ,D F E Samtleben ,M Marcelin ,A Trovato ,S Galatá ,M André ,A Gleixner ,Erwin Visser ,D Drouhin ,J.j Aubert ,T Chiarusi ,Dominik Elsässer ,J Busto ,J Brünner ,J Zúñiga

doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2016.06.051

Abstract

Compelling evidence for the existence of astrophysical neutrinos has been reported by the IceCube collaboration. Some features of the energy and declination distributions of IceCube events hint at a North/South asymmetry of the neutrino flux. This could be due to the presence of the bulk of our Galaxy in the Southern hemisphere. The ANTARES neutrino telescope, located in the Mediterranean Sea, has been taking data since 2007. It offers the best sensitivity to muon neutrinos produced by galactic cosmic ray interactions in this region of the sky. In this letter a search for an extended neutrino flux from the Galactic Ridge region is presented. Different models of neutrino production by cosmic ray propagation are tested. No excess of events is observed and upper limits for different neutrino flux spectral indices are set. This constrains the number of IceCube events possibly originating from the Galactic Ridge. A simple power-law extrapolation of the Fermi-LAT flux to associated IceCube High Energy Starting Events is excluded at 90% confidence level.

Highlights

Neutrino telescopes search for high-energy (Eν GeV) neutrinos produced by astrophysical objects
The IceCube Collaboration has reported the observation of astrophysical neutrinos with the High Energy Starting Events (HESE) [3,4], and confirmed the discovery in other analyses [5,6]
An enhanced neutrino production from the central part of the Galactic Plane has been searched for using track-like events observed by the ANTARES telescope from 2007 to 2013

Summary

Introduction

Neutrino telescopes search for high-energy (Eν GeV) neutrinos produced by astrophysical objects. No excess of events is observed and upper limits for different neutrino flux spectral indices are set. The IceCube Collaboration has reported the observation of astrophysical neutrinos with the High Energy Starting Events (HESE) [3,4], and confirmed the discovery in other analyses [5,6].

Results

Conclusion