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GCN Circular 21657

Subject
LIGO/Virgo G298936: IceCube neutrino observations
Date
2017-08-23T14:12:33Z (8 years ago)
From
Stefan Countryman at LIGO Scientific Collaboration <stefan.countryman@ligo.org>
I. Bartos, S. Countryman (Columbia), C. Finley (U Stockholm), E. Blaufuss (U Maryland), R. Corley, Z. Marka, S. Marka (Columbia) on behalf of the IceCube Collaboration

In an analysis completed at 2017-08-23 13:41:57 UTC, we searched IceCube online track-like neutrino candidates (GFU) detected in a [-500,500] second interval about the LIGO-Virgo trigger G298936. We compared the candidate source directions of 8 temporally-coincident neutrinos to the BAYESTAR skymap, with the following parameters:

#            dt[s]     RA[deg]    Dec[deg]      E[TeV]  Sigma[deg]
------------------------------------------------------------------
1.         -398.00       226.9       -11.4        6.16         0.2
2.         -172.94        84.3        19.3        0.99         0.9
3.          -62.90         0.5         0.1        0.49         0.6
4.          155.56        36.5        39.7        0.82         0.7
5.          234.88       265.5        10.3        0.81         0.6
6.          263.89       174.4        23.7        1.61         3.4
7.          388.57       341.9       -26.9       15.35         0.2
8.          473.06       346.6        33.8        0.73         0.8


(dt--time from GW in [seconds]; RA/Dec--sky location in [degrees]; E--reconstructed secondary muon energy in [TeV]; Sigma--uncertainty of direction reconstruction in [degrees])

The analysis found NO COINCIDENT ONLINE TRACK-LIKE NEUTRINO CANDIDATES detected by IceCube within the 500 second window surrounding G298936 within the BAYESTAR skymap.

A coincident neutrino-GW skymap has been posted to GraceDB (<https://gracedb.ligo.org/apiweb/events/G298936/files/coinc_skymap_initial_icecube.png,0>). A JSON-formatted list of the above neutrinos can be downloaded from GraceDB at: <https://gracedb.ligo.org/apiweb/events/G298936/files/IceCubeNeutrinoList.json,0>

In addition, we are performing coincident searches with other IceCube data streams, including the high-energy starting events (HESE) and Supernova triggers.  HESE events have typical energies > 60 TeV and start inside the detector volume, leading to a relatively pure event sample with a high fraction of astrophysical neutrinos.  The SN trigger system is sensitive to sudden increases in photomultiplier counts across the detector, which could indicate a burst of MeV neutrinos.  We will submit separate GCN circulars if coincident HESE or SN triggers are found.

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a cubic-kilometer neutrino detector operating at the geographic South Pole, Antarctica.  For a description of the IceCube realtime alert system, please refer to <http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/bib_query?arXiv:1610.01814>; for more information on joint neutrino and gravitational wave searches, please refer to <http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/bib_query?arXiv:1602.05411>.
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