Limits on Neutrino Emission from GRB 221009A from MeV to PeV Using the IceCube Neutrino Observatory

Abstract

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have long been considered a possible source of high-energy neutrinos. While no correlations have yet been detected between high-energy neutrinos and GRBs, the recent observation of GRB 221009A—the brightest GRB observed by Fermi-GBM to date and the first one to be observed above an energy of 10 TeV—provides a unique opportunity to test for hadronic emission. In this paper, we leverage the wide energy range of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory to search for neutrinos from GRB 221009A. We find no significant deviation from background expectation across event samples ranging from MeV to PeV energies, placing stringent upper limits on the neutrino emission from this source.

External Inverse-compton and Proton Synchrotron Emission from the Reverse Shock as the Origin of VHE Gamma Rays from the Hyper-bright GRB 221009A

“…Note that the cooling of secondary muons and pions is neglected when calculating the neutrino flux in our model, which will reduce the flux of the higher-energy part of the observed neutrino spectrum, especially for Episode II (Murase 2007). The predicted neutrino fluence is consistent with the upper limits reported by IceCube (Ai & Gao 2022;Murase et al 2022;Abbasi et al2023).…”

A Detectable Ultra-high-energy Cosmic-Ray Outburst from GRB 221009A

“…In Figure 2, we plot the all-flavor neutrino fluence. The IceCube found no track-like events to the direction of the GRB from the fast-response analysis (FRA; IceCube Collaboration 2022; Abbasi et al 2023) in a time window of −1 to +2 hr from the Fermi-GBM trigger time, assuming a power-law neutrino spectrum with different index p (IceCube Collaboration 2022). We plot the IceCube 90% CL upper limit of allflavor neutrinos for index p = 1.5 in Figure 2, which shows that our predicted neutrino flux does not violate the IceCube upper limit, assuming the flavor ratio as 1: 1: 1 after oscillation.…”

“…If protons are accelerated at the energy dissipation radius during the prompt emission phase, the photomeson production interaction and the Bethe-Heitler pair production process between accelerated protons and prompt photons will produce neutrons, neutrinos, and electromagnetic particles initiating electromagnetic cascades (contributing to GeV-TeV photons) (Böttcher & Dermer 1998;Dermer & Atoyan 2006;Wang et al 2018). The non-detection of neutrinos by the IceCube observatory, observations on GeV photons by Fermi-LAT, and observations on VHE photons by LHAASO set constraints on the acceleration and interaction mechanism of protons (Bissaldi et al 2022;Murase et al 2022;Veres et al 2022;Abbasi et al 2023;Ai & Gao 2023;Liu et al 2023;Rudolph et al 2023;Wang et al 2023). The tightest constraint is made by Wang et al (2023) based on LHAASO observations, and the baryon loading factor is constrained to be ξ p ≡ E p /E γ,iso 2 for a Lorentz factor Γ = 500, suggesting a possible high isotropic energy deposited in protons (E p ).…”

On the “Loose” Constraint from IceCube Neutrino Nondetection of GRB 230307A

“…A data set of high-energy track events is used in the analysis by IceCube to extract the UL of neutrino fluence, and the sensitivity can vary greatly over different declinations (δ) (Abbasi et al 2021(Abbasi et al , 2023b. GRB 230307A is located at the southern hemisphere with δ = −75°.4, while δ = + 19°.8 for GRB 221009A.…”