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ANTARES Collaboration(Albert, A. et al), Barrios-Marti, J., Coleiro, A., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., Illuminati, G., Lotze, M., et al. (2018). All-flavor Search for a Diffuse Flux of Cosmic Neutrinos with Nine Years of ANTARES Data. Astrophys. J. Lett., 853(1), L7–5pp.
Abstract: The ANTARES detector is at present the most sensitive neutrino telescope in the northern hemisphere. The highly significant cosmic neutrino excess observed by the Antarctic IceCube detector can be studied with ANTARES, exploiting its complementing field of view, exposure, and lower energy threshold. Searches for an all-flavor diffuse neutrino signal, covering nine years of ANTARES data taking, are presented in this Letter. Upward-going events are used to reduce the atmospheric muon background. This work includes for the first time in ANTARES both track-like (mainly nu mu) and shower-like (mainly nu(e)) events in this kind of analysis. Track-like events allow for an increase of the effective volume of the detector thanks to the long path traveled by muons in rock and/ or sea water. Shower-like events are well reconstructed only when the neutrino interaction vertex is close to, or inside, the instrumented volume. A mild excess of high-energy events over the expected background is observed in nine years of ANTARES data in both samples. The best fit for a single power-law cosmic neutrino spectrum, in terms of perflavor flux at 100 TeV, is Phi(1f)(0) (100 TeV) = (1.7 +/- 1.0) x 10(-18) GeV-1 cm(-2) s(-1) sr(-1) with spectral index Gamma = 2.4(-0.4)(+0.5) .The null cosmic flux assumption is rejected with a significance of 1.6 sigma .
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ANTARES Collaboration(Adrian-Martinez, S. et al), Barrios-Marti, J., Gomez-Gonzalez, J. P., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., Lambard, G., Mangano, S., et al. (2016). Time calibration with atmospheric muon tracks in the ANTARES neutrino telescope. Astropart Phys., 78, 43–51.
Abstract: The ANTARES experiment consists of an array of photomultipliers distributed along 12 lines and located deep underwater in the Mediterranean Sea. It searches for astrophysical neutrinos collecting the Cherenkov light induced by the charged particles, mainly muons, produced in neutrino interactions around the detector. Since at energies of similar to 10 TeV the muon and the incident neutrino are almost collinear, it is possible to use the ANTARES detector as a neutrino telescope and identify a source of neutrinos in the sky starting from a precise reconstruction of the muon trajectory. To get this result, the arrival times of the Cherenkov photons must be accurately measured. A to perform time calibrations with the precision required to have optimal performances of the instrument is described. The reconstructed tracks of the atmospheric muons in the ANTARES detector are used to determine the relative time offsets between photomultipliers. Currently, this method is used to obtain the time calibration constants for photomultipliers on different lines at a precision level of 0.5 ns. It has also been validated for calibrating photomultipliers on the same line, using a system of LEDs and laser light devices.
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ANTARES Collaboration(Adrian-Martinez, S. et al), Barrios-Marti, J., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., Lambard, G., Mangano, S., Sanchez-Losa, A., et al. (2015). Search for muon-neutrino emission from GeV and TeV gamma-ray flaring blazars using five years of data of the ANTARES telescope. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 12(12), 014–27pp.
Abstract: The ANTARES telescope is well-suited for detecting astrophysical transient neutrino sources as it can observe a full hemisphere of the sky at all times with a high duty cycle. The background due to atmospheric particles can be drastically reduced, and the point-source sensitivity improved, by selecting a narrow time window around possible neutrino production periods. Blazars, being radio-loud active galactic nuclei with their jets pointing almost directly towards the observer, are particularly attractive potential neutrino point sources, since they are among the most likely sources of the very high-energy cosmic rays. Neutrinos and gamma rays may be produced in hadronic interactions with the surrounding medium. Moreover, blazars generally show high time variability in their light curves at different wavelengths and on various time scales. This paper presents a time-dependent analysis applied to a selection of flaring gamma-ray blazars observed by the FERMI/LAT experiment and by TeV Cherenkov telescopes using five years of ANTARES data taken from 2008 to 2012. The results are compatible with fluctuations of the background. Upper limits on the neutrino fluence have been produced and compared to the measured gamma-ray spectral energy distribution.
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ANTARES Collaboration(Albert, A. et al), Barrios-Marti, J., Coleiro, A., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., Illuminati, G., Lotze, M., et al. (2017). New constraints on all flavor Galactic diffuse neutrino emission with the ANTARES telescope. Phys. Rev. D, 96(6), 062001–8pp.
Abstract: The flux of very high-energy neutrinos produced in our Galaxy by the interaction of accelerated cosmic rays with the interstellar medium is not yet determined. The characterization of this flux will shed light on Galactic accelerator features, gas distribution morphology and Galactic cosmic ray transport. The central Galactic plane can be the site of an enhanced neutrino production, thus leading to anisotropies in the extraterrestrial neutrino signal as measured by the IceCube Collaboration. The ANTARES neutrino telescope, located in the Mediterranean Sea, offers a favorable view of this part of the sky, thereby allowing for a contribution to the determination of this flux. The expected diffuse Galactic neutrino emission can be obtained, linking a model of generation and propagation of cosmic rays with the morphology of the gas distribution in the Milky Way. In this paper, the so-called “gamma model” introduced recently to explain the high-energy gamma-ray diffuse Galactic emission is assumed as reference. The neutrino flux predicted by the “gamma model” depends on the assumed primary cosmic ray spectrum cutoff. Considering a radially dependent diffusion coefficient, this proposed scenario is able to account for the local cosmic ray measurements, as well as for the Galactic gamma-ray observations. Nine years of ANTARES data are used in this work to search for a possible Galactic contribution according to this scenario. All flavor neutrino interactions are considered. No excess of events is observed, and an upper limit is set on the neutrino flux of 1.1 (1.2) times the prediction of the “gamma model,” assuming the primary cosmic ray spectrum cutoff at 5 (50) PeV. This limit excludes the diffuse Galactic neutrino emission as the major cause of the “spectral anomaly” between the two hemispheres measured by IceCube.
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KM3NeT Collaboration(Adrian-Martinez, S. et al), Barrios-Marti, J., Calvo, D., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., Illuminati, G., Lotze, M., et al. (2016). A method to stabilise the performance of negatively fed KM3NeT photomultipliers. J. Instrum., 11, P12014–12pp.
Abstract: The KM3NeT research infrastructure, currently under construction in the Mediterranean Sea, will host neutrino telescopes for the identification of neutrino sources in the Universe and for studies of the neutrino mass hierarchy. These telescopes will house hundreds of thousands of photomultiplier tubes that will have to be operated in a stable and reliable fashion. In this context, the stability of the dark counts has been investigated for photomultiplier tubes with negative high voltage on the photocathode and held in insulating support structures made of 3D printed nylon material. Small gaps between the rigid support structure and the photomultiplier tubes in the presence of electric fields can lead to discharges that produce dark count rates that are highly variable. A solution was found by applying the same insulating varnish as used for the high voltage bases directly to the outside of the photomultiplier tubes. This transparent conformal coating provides a convenient and inexpensive method of insulation.
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