Search for sources of High-Energy neutrons with four years of data from the Icetop Detector

Journal article

IceTop is an air-shower array located on the Antarctic ice sheet at the geographic South Pole. IceTop can detect an astrophysicalflux of neutrons from Galactic sources as an excess of cosmic-ray air showers arriving from the source direction. Neutrons are undeflected by the Galactic magneticfield and can typically travel 10(E/PeV)pc before decay. Two searches are performed using 4 yr of the IceTop data set to look for a statistically significant excess of events with energies above 10 PeV(10^16 eV) arriving within a small solid angle. The all-sky search method covers from−90°to approximately −50°in declination. No significant excess is found. A targeted search is also performed, looking for significant correlation with candidate sources in different target sets. This search uses a higher-energy cut(100 PeV) since most target objects lie beyond 1 kpc. The target sets include pulsars with confirmed TeV energy photon fluxes and high-mass X-ray binaries. No significant correlation is found for any target set. Flux upper limits are determined for both searches, which can constrain Galactic neutron sources and production scenarios.

Authors: Sarkar, S; IceCube Collaboration (310 others)

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Institute of Physics
• Journal: Astrophysical Journal
• Volume: 830
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 129-129
• Publication date: 2016-10-01
• Acceptance date: 2016-08-09
• DOI: 10.3847/0004-637X/830/2/129
• ISSN: 0004-637X, 1538-4357
• Keywords: astroparticle physics; cosmic rays; methods: data analysis