GCN Circular 31243

V. Savchenko, C. Ferrigno (ISDC/UniGE, Switzerland)
J. Rodi (IAPS-Roma, Italy)
A. Coleiro (APC, France)
S. Mereghetti (INAF IASF-Milano, Italy)

on behalf of the INTEGRAL multi-messenger collaboration:
<https://www.astro.unige.ch/cdci/integral-multimessenger-collaboration>

Using combination of INTEGRAL all-sky detectors (following [1]):
SPI/ACS, IBIS/Veto, and IBIS we have performed a search for a prompt
gamma-ray counterpart of IceCube-211216A (GCN 31241
Not found
 
 
).

At the time of the event (2021-12-16 07:07:38 UTC, hereafter T0),
INTEGRAL was operating in nominal mode. The peak of the event
localization probability was at an angle of 153 deg with respect to
the spacecraft pointing axis. This orientation implies strongly
suppressed (2.7% of optimal) response of ISGRI, somewhat suppressed
(54% of optimal) response of IBIS/Veto, and somewhat suppressed (44%
of optimal) response of SPI-ACS.

The background within +/-300 seconds around the event was somewhat
unstable (excess variance 1.8).

We have performed a search for any impulsive events in INTEGRAL SPI-
ACS (as described in [2]), IBIS, and IBIS/Veto data.

We do not detect any significant counterparts and estimate a 3-sigma
upper limit on the 75-2000 keV fluence of 3.9e-07 erg/cm^2 (within the
50% probability containment region of the source localization) for a
burst lasting less than 1 s with a characteristic short GRB spectrum
(an exponentially cut off power law with alpha=-0.5 and Ep=600 keV)
occurring at any time in the interval within 300 s around T0. For a
typical long GRB spectrum (Band function with alpha=-1, beta=-2.5, and
Ep=300 keV), the derived peak flux upper limit is ~3.9e-07 (1.2e-07)
erg/cm^2/s at 1 s (8 s) time scale in 75-2000 keV energy range.

We report for completeness and in order of FAP, all excesses
identified in the search region. We find: 1 tentatively associated
excess:

T-T0 | scale | S/N | flux ( x 1e-06 erg/cm2/s) | FAP
0.0226 | 0.7 | 3.4 | 0.521 +/- 0.15 +/- 0.13 | 0.00936

1 possibly associated excess:

T-T0 | scale | S/N | flux ( x 1e-06 erg/cm2/s) | FAP
0.748 | 0.05 | 3.7 | 2.23 +/- 0.571 +/- 0.557 | 0.0466

3 likely background excesses:

T-T0 | scale | S/N | flux ( x 1e-06 erg/cm2/s) | FAP
-14.9 | 1.15 | 3.4 | 0.405 +/- 0.117 +/- 0.101 | 0.126
-159 | 3.3 | 3.2 | 2.14 +/- 0.687 +/- 0.536 | 0.645
220 | 0.75 | 4.2 | 0.613 +/- 0.145 +/- 0.153 | 0.736

Note that FAP estimates (especially at timescales above 2s) may be
possibly further affected by enhanced non-stationary local background
noise. This list excludes any excesses for which FAP is close to
unity.

We note that combination of two low-FAP excesses (at T0+0.02s and 
T0+0.74s)
is unusual, but accurate assessment of the chance of this coincidence
would require much more detailed analysis.


All results quoted are preliminary.

This circular is an official product of the INTEGRAL Multi-Messenger
team.

[1] Savchenko et al. 2017, A&A 603, A46 [2] Savchenko et al. 2012, A&A
541A, 122S