Detection of a Type IIn Supernova in Optical Follow-up Observations of IceCube Neutrino Events

Abstract

The IceCube neutrino observatory pursues a follow-up program selecting interesting neutrino events in real-time and issuing alerts for electromagnetic follow-up observations. In March 2012, the most significant neutrino alert during the first three years of operation was issued by IceCube. In the follow-up observations performed by the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF), a Type IIn supernova (SN) PTF12csy was found $0.2^{\circ }$ away from the neutrino alert direction, with an error radius of $0.54^{\circ }$. It has a redshift of $z=0.0684$, corresponding to a luminosity distance of about $300\mathrm{Mpc}$ and the Pan-STARRS1 survey shows that its explosion time was at least 158 days (in host galaxy rest frame) before the neutrino alert, so that a causal connection is unlikely. The a posteriori significance of the chance detection of both the neutrinos and the SN at any epoch is $2.2\sigma$ within IceCube's 2011/12 data acquisition season. Also, a complementary neutrino analysis reveals no long-term signal over the course of one year. Therefore, we consider the SN detection coincidental and the neutrinos uncorrelated to the SN. However, the SN is unusual and interesting by itself: It is luminous and energetic, bearing strong resemblance to the SN IIn 2010jl, and shows signs of interaction of the SN ejecta with a dense circumstellar medium. High-energy neutrino emission is expected in models of diffusive shock acceleration, but at a low, non-detectable level for this specific SN. In this paper, we describe the SN PTF12csy and present both the neutrino and electromagnetic data, as well as their analysis.

17 pages, 10 figures

References in corpus (11)

• The Eleventh and Twelfth Data Releases of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Final Data from SDSS-III
• The 2.5 m Telescope of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• SN 2006gy: An extremely luminous supernova in the galaxy NGC 1260
• The Landscape of the Neutrino Mechanism of Core-Collapse Supernovae: Neutron Star and Black Hole Mass Functions, Explosion Energies and Nickel Yields
• Methods for point source analysis in high energy neutrino telescopes
• Rapid formation of large dust grains in the luminous supernova SN 2010jl
• Revealing the Supernova--Gamma-Ray Burst Connection with TeV Neutrinos
• ESC Supernova spectroscopy of non-ESC targets
• IPAC Image Processing and Data Archiving for the Palomar Transient Factory
• Detecting neutrino-transients with optical follow-up observations
• Swift follow-up of IceCube triggers, and implications for the Advanced-LIGO era

Cited by in corpus (33)

• The IceCube Neutrino Observatory: Instrumentation and Online Systems
• Science with e-ASTROGAM (A space mission for MeV-GeV gamma-ray astrophysics)
• The IceCube Realtime Alert System
• Observation of an Unusual Upward-going Cosmic-ray-like Event in the Third Flight of ANITA
• Sciences with the 2.5-meter Wide Field Survey Telescope (WFST)
• Type IIn supernovae as sources of high energy astrophysical neutrinos
• Pan-STARRS and PESSTO search for an optical counterpart to the LIGO gravitational wave source GW150914
• Very High-Energy Gamma-Ray Follow-Up Program Using Neutrino Triggers from IceCube
• Neutrinos from Choked Jets Accompanied by Type-II Supernovae
• Point-source and diffuse high-energy neutrino emission from Type IIn supernovae
• Multiwavelength follow-up of a rare IceCube neutrino multiplet
• Constraints on the Physical Properties of GW190814 through Simulations based on DECam Follow-up Observations by the Dark Energy Survey
• Eddington bias for cosmic neutrino sources
• A Consistent Theory of Decaying Dark Matter Connecting IceCube to the Sesame Street
• High-Energy Extragalactic Neutrino Astrophysics
• Constraints on Minute-Scale Transient Astrophysical Neutrino Sources
• Neutrinos and Cosmic Rays Observed by IceCube
• Radio synchrotron emission from secondary electrons in interaction-powered supernovae
• A Long-Duration Luminous Type IIn Supernova KISS15s: Strong Recombination Lines from the Inhomogeneous Ejecta-CSM Interaction Region and Hot Dust Emission from Newly Formed Dust
• Follow-up of astrophysical transients in real time with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory
• Neutrino follow-up with the Zwicky Transient Facility: Results from the first 24 campaigns
• The Large Array Survey Telescope -- Science Goals
• Search for transient optical counterparts to high-energy IceCube neutrinos with Pan-STARRS1
• A DECam Search for Explosive Optical Transients Associated with IceCube Neutrinos
• Prospects for extending the core-collapse supernova detection horizon using high-energy neutrinos
• High-Energy Neutrino Astronomy: where do we stand, where do we go?
• Follow-up Observations for IceCube-170922A: Detection of Rapid Near-Infrared Variability and Intensive Monitoring of TXS 0506+056
• Using Neutrino Oscillations to Measure $H_0$
• The Dawn of Multi-Messenger Astronomy
• A six year image-subtraction light curve of SN 2010jl
• Detector Optimization Figures-of-merit for IceCube's High-energy Extension
• The Type IIn SN 2025cbj coincidence with the high-energy neutrino IceCube-250421A
• Identifying multiplets of IceCube alert events