ANTARES Collaboration(Albert, A. et al), Alves, S., Calvo, D., Carretero, V., Gozzini, R., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., et al. (2023). Limits on the nuclearite flux using the ANTARES neutrino telescope. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 01(1), 012–19pp.
Abstract: In this work, a search for nuclearites of strange quark matter by using nine years of ANTARES data taken in the period 2009-2017 is presented. The passage through matter of these particles is simulated taking into account a detailed description of the detector response to nuclearites and of the data acquisition conditions. A down-going flux of cosmic nuclearites with Galactic velocities (beta = 10(-3)) was considered for this study. The mass threshold for detecting these particles at the detector level is 4 x 10(13) GeV/c(2). Upper limits on the nuclearite flux for masses up to 10(17) GeV/c(2) at the level of similar to 5 x 10(-17) cm(-2) s(-1) sr(-1) are obtained. These are the first upper limits on nuclearites established with a neutrino telescope and the most stringent ever set for Galactic velocities.
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ANTARES Collaboration(Albert, A. et al), Alves, S., Calvo, D., Carretero, V., Gozzini, R., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., et al. (2024). Searches for Neutrinos in the Direction of Radio-bright Blazars with the ANTARES Telescope. Astrophys. J., 964(1), 3–13pp.
Abstract: Active galaxies, especially blazars, are among the most promising extragalactic candidates for high-energy neutrino sources. To date, ANTARES searches included these objects and used GeV-TeV gamma-ray flux to select blazars. Here, a statistically complete blazar sample selected by their bright radio emission is used as the target for searches of origins of neutrinos collected by the ANTARES neutrino telescope over 13 yr of operation. The hypothesis of a neutrino-blazar directional correlation is tested by pair counting and a complementary likelihood-based approach. The resulting posttrial p-value is 3.0% (2.2 sigma in the two-sided convention). Additionally, a time-dependent analysis is performed to search for temporal clustering of neutrino candidates as a means of detecting neutrino flares in blazars. None of the investigated sources alone reaches a significant flare detection level. However, the presence of 18 sources with a pretrial significance above 3 sigma indicates a p = 1.4% (2.5 sigma in the two-sided convention) detection of a time-variable neutrino flux. An a posteriori investigation reveals an intriguing temporal coincidence of neutrino, radio, and gamma-ray flares of the J0242+1101 blazar at a p = 0.5% (2.9 sigma in the two-sided convention) level. Altogether, the results presented here suggest a possible connection of neutrino candidates detected by the ANTARES telescope with radio-bright blazars.
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