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Searches for High-Energy Neutrinos from Gamma-Ray Bursts with the ANTARES Neutrino Telescope - Julia SchmidToggle Cloak Cloak ANTARES is the largest high-energy neutrino telescope in the Northern Hemisphere. Its main scientific purpose is the search for astrophysical muon neutrinos that are detected via their charged-current interaction in Earth and the subsequent Cherenkov emission of the secondary muon in the water of the Mediterranean Sea. Gamma-ray bursts are among the most promising candidates for the experiment as they are thought to accelerate not only electrons - leading to the observed gamma rays - but also protons, which would yield the emission of EeV neutrinos. Compelling evidence of a high-energy cosmic neutrino signal correlated with any astrophysical source would, for the first time, prove the acceleration of hadrons beyond any doubt, a hypothesis that cannot unambiguously be put to the test by pure electromagnetic observation. However, to explain the origin of cosmic rays at ultra-high energies, it is absolutely crucial to identify those processes in the universe that are capable of accelerating baryons to such energies. The recent searches for muon neutrinos from gamma-ray bursts using data of the ANTARES telescope will be presented. Several techniques to single out a neutrino signal from GRBs in the ANTARES data were developed, both in the search for simultaneous as well as a possibly time-shifted neutrino emission with respect to the photon signal. Data from multiple spacecraft and Earth-bound telescopes within the Gamma-ray burst Coordinates Network such as the Swift and Fermi satellites were used to search for correlated neutrinos in the data from the ANTARES telescope. The search could not identify any significant neutrino excess associated with gamma-ray bursts, yet the non-observation is still compatible with the realistic second-generation numerical predictions of neutrino emission. However, I could demonstrate that the future telescope KM3NeT will be capable of putting these models to the test with unprecedented sensitivity, allowing for the first time the neutrino flux as predicted by the realistic models to be detected, or the parameter space upon which they are based to be severely constrained. - Maxwell Jingo
Mon., June 1
Wed., June 3
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory - Kelly MaloneToggle Cloak Cloak The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Gamma-Ray Observatory, located at an altitude of 4100 m on the Sierra Negra plateau in Mexico, is a second-generation experiment designed to observe TeV gamma rays and cosmic rays from air showers. It consists of a large array of water Cherenkov detectors, each of which is equipped with 4 PMTs. HAWC’s large field of view (~2 sr) and high duty cycle (>90%) make it well suited to constrain the cutoff and shape of high-energy GRB spectra. It also extends the spectral measurements with made with the Fermi-LAT up to 100 GeV to higher energies. I will discuss the status of HAWC’s GRB searches.
Muon Production Depth Studies - Hershal PandyaToggle Cloak Cloak The IceCube neutrino observatory also serves as a laboratory to study nuclear and electromagnetic cosmic particles. Primaries are observed as air showers in IceTop – the surface component of IceCube. By correlating arrival time of muons with distance from the shower core, the longitudinal history of the muon production may be resolved. We explore the usefulness of muon production depth distribution in resolving the mass of primary, and the dependence of this distribution on factors such as zenith, primary energy and sampling radial distance from shower core. We use the EHISTORY option in air shower simulation code CORSIKA to obtain true muon production depth distribution and use it as a benchmark to determine the corrections necessary in observed muon arrival time.
Photospheric Emission from GRBs - Zeynep AcunerToggle Cloak Cloak Abstract - Rosa Becerra Godínez
- Clio Sleator
- Carolyn Kierans
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